The Daily Candy reports today (25th April) that the Punch Bowl has re-opened after closing for a brief period for refurbishment (reported earlier here). According to the item, the celebrity owners have “…given the oldest watering hole in Mayfair (built in the 1750s) a thoroughly British makeover…”.

Let’s hope they have, but the  Hello-style publicity surrounding the pub over the last few weeks gives us cause for concern. We will, naturally, be reporting back to you in due course.

BTW, in case you’re interested, according to Pubs.com the oldest pub in Mayfair is actually the Guinea.

Not everyone enters Fancyapint.com through the home page, so it’s possible you might not have noticed it, but we launched a new home page design this weekend (19/04/2008).

With the launch of the new home page, the redesign of the site is nearly complete. Some of you might miss the reassuring dark blue of the old home page - it’s taken us a bit of time to get used to the new one, but for one reason or another, we felt we had to move on.

We’ve added a lot more to the home page, so you can see at a glance the latest news, updates and comments on the Fancyapint.com.

There’s still a lot more tidying up to do, so please bear with us as we trawl through the backlog and we’ll be adding some new features to the site very soon.

In the meantime. of course, if you have any comments, suggestions, observations or corrections, you know where to come. Email us at the usual address: editor@fancyapint.com.

Cheers!

According to the Guardian, today (9 April) nearly four pubs a day are closing:

“Almost four pubs a day are closing for business, taking down their swinging signs and their hanging baskets and boarding up their windows. It is the most powerful signal yet that one of Britain’s oldest, most resilient industries is in a dire state.”

Like farmers, publicans aren’t renowned for their optimistic outlook, but we feel it’s not always bad news. For instance, the pub pictured in the article - an old favourite, the Intrepid Fox - has reopened here and another recently-closed pub - the Crown (in Bow), reopens this weekend.

We’re not saying that the situation isn’t bad, we believe too many good pubs are closing for the wrong reasons, but we still feel the cataclysmic decline of the great British pub has been somewhat overstated.

Anyway, for more on the Graun thing, read here.

At Fancyapint.com we’re used to receiving all kinds of bizarre enquiries relating to all manner of pub-related matters, but one a few months ago seemed a bit more intriguing than most. Did we know – asked a TV researcher – of any pubs in London that didn’t serve food but had a kitchen?

Well, we put our heads together, came up with a few pubs, and passed on the details.

We were intrigued with the question though – what on earth did the researcher need this info for? We guessed it would be for some sort of reality TV thing, but that’s about as inspired as we got.

Now the penny’s dropped. The reason – we’ve suddenly realised – will reach your screens this Wednesday, when in episode 3 of the latest series of BBC’s The Apprentice, the two teams have to start up a food service, from scratch, in two different London pubs.

Will there be full blown gastro menu (courtesy Marks & Sparks?) or maybe a Thai Kitchen? Personally, we’re hoping for pies. We’ll just have to tune in to find out…

The debate about who really has bought one of our favourite pubs in Mayfair, the Punch Bowl continues.  There was a bit of a hoo-hah earlier this month after this story broke about a new owner, only to be strenuously denied by the purported new owner’s own PR people almost immediately after.

Our latest understanding (from yet another source) is that ownership lies somewhere between, with said Mr Ritchie purchasing half of the pub.

What difference any of this makes remains to be seen, will we ever see a familiar face behind the bar? We’ll just have to wait and see, as the question right now is somewhat moot - the pub is closing today for a couple of weeks for a spot of refurbishment.

We got a very nice plug at the weekend from the Sunday Times, who appear to like what we do, click on the image to see what they said about us in full. You can also read the article online here.

We’d love to know if the Hootananny’s Ceilidh Cafe Bar in Inverness gets more customers as a result of the article - we really hope so.

What is it about decent pubs in London that developers and breweries think - well, that’s a prime site for development!?! We’re saddened to hear from a related blog that yet another of our favourite pubs in London - and this one a brewpub with it’s own range of beers, at that - is due to be sold to Wells and Youngs.

If you haven’t guessed by now (from the photo) it’s the Cock and Hen in Fulham, which has been open less than a year. We liked it so much we gave it an award for Most Improved Pub in our awards last October. Having since spoken to Phil the landlord, he’s told us that it’s closing down on the 10th of March.

He also said that Capital Pubs got an offer for the property they could refuse, and while we understand that pubcos are in business to make money, rather than just provide us excellent places to drink, it’s a shame that good pubs and good people are affected like this, particularly when we’re losing so many pubs on a regular basis.

We understand the brewery fixtures are being stored until new premises for another brewpub are found, and that the beers are going to be available in three of their sister pubs, one of which is the Florence in Southeast London.

In the meantime, if you fancy a decent pint at an award-winning pub, make sure you get there soon.

STOP PRESS! The old Cock and Hen closed its doors on 7 March, in preparation for handover to the new owners. We’ll let you know what they do with it.

Every so often we get a comment posted alleging that one kind of crime or another was committed in or near to a particular pub. It can be anything from handbag stealing to racism, homophobia to out-and-out violence, these things happen sometimes. We understand that often these comments are posted as warnings to other pub-goers to prevent them also from falling victim to a similar crime. Unfortunately, unless someone has been convicted of a crime, we are not able publish these comments - it could cause us legal problems, we can’t publish allegations and hearsay as fact.

If you feel you are the victim of a crime (or a witness to one) let the appropriate authorities know, your local authority can often help. But, start with the pub management, if that’s possible - you can often resolve things more quickly that way and if that doesn’t help, call the police.

If you entered our readers’ poll competition, you might be wondering if you won it (or not) - well we’re sorry to say if you haven’t heard from us, you haven’t won.

The winner was Clare, who suggested we should have picked the Colton Arms in our 2007 awards. We almost agree with her, the Colton Arms always appears close to the top of any list of our favourite pub and was in fact a FAP award winner in 2004. Anyway, Clare gets one of the last of our Fancyapint? in London books and a copy of Man walks into a pub.

And in case you’re wondering, here are the results:

London pub awards 2007 readers’ poll

YES - I agree with the Fancyapint reviewers

57.89%

NO! - I have a better suggestion …

42.11%

We’ve bad news and good news for all you tech-savvy pub-fans on the move - our “PINT” text-messaging service is no more. Our current provider has stopped offering location-based services and we’ve found it difficult (and very expensive) to find an alternative SMS service.

However, it’s not all bad news, we have joined forces with a company that delivers data to mobile phones and we hope to have a prototype service up and running early in the new year. If you’re interested in being a beta-tester for this service let us know.

In the meantime, apologies for loss of this service, for now when you’re out and about and looking for somewhere for a drink, you’ll have to use alternative sources.