ON a sunny Brussels morning, there was a moment that, more than anything that would happen over the ensuing 24 hours, continues to haunt me. Our train had just arrived at Jette station and a long column of Liverpool supporters set off downhill towards the centre of...
AT first, it seemed like a joke. The name sounded funny: Purple Aki. It was Spring Heeled Jack for the 1980s. Just another terrifying urban legend that spread through fear and mass hysteria. The whole thing appeared preposterous. My younger brothers — five and...
THE defence for Roy Hodgson seems to come from two angles. The first is based on the assertion that he is a “nice man”. The second is that there is no other viable candidate for the England manager’s job. The apologists at the FA also believe that Hodgson has overseen...
“WE’RE not English we are Scouse!” It’s the chant that irritates opposing fans more than any other. You can see the bewilderment; the disgust. You can almost see the thought process: “What makes you so different? What makes you special?” Even within Liverpool, there...
JUST when you thought it was safe to say nice things about Luis Suárez, he goes and does it again. The dirty, cheating little so-and-so. There were even the first rumbling suggestions that he could be a potential footballer of the year. It couldn’t last. Once again,...
ON Sunday, Manchester United go to Anfield for Liverpool’s first home game since the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s devastating findings. The report shocked a Prime Minister and most of the nation. It looks like one of those unhappy quirks of fate that the Kop’s...
IT was the day Liverpool got its reputation back. For so long, the place had been sniggered at and derided, tagged “self-pity city” and supposedly populated by whingeing, conspiracy theorists. Yesterday it turned out that Liverpool was right all along. Attitudes had...
ANDREW DEVINE has never spoken about what happened to him on a sunny spring day 23 years ago. He has never spoken about anything since. He was 22 when he went to a football match, an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. For the...
THE main reason to support Sweden is they’ve got a great kit – especially the away kit. It’s as good a reason as any…unless you’re a Swede. Oh, and they’re playing England. That always adds a little piquancy. If you’re...
Alan Davies got it wrong on Twitter but in the real world there are far more serious issues for fans TOMORROW John Glover will try to go to Anfield for the annual memorial service on the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. If he can get there, it will be his...
The third episode of season one of The Pub Crawlers Podcast was recorded in Nottingham, as Rob Gutmann hosts Steve Graves and Martin Fitzgerald to discuss the local pub scene, Indian restaurants, students, and more…
The Pub Crawlers Podcast represents a quest to find the very best authentic UK pubs, filmed on location inside some of the finest boozers across the UK and Ireland.
Well, sort of. It’s equally about friends having three to four pint-fuelled, quintessential pub conversations, on any subjects that damn well occur to them, in a range of outstanding boozers across the land. So, really, it’s as much about what we get up to in pubs as the pubs themselves.
The shows are presented by self-styled boozer connoisseur and long-time pub designer and owner, Rob Gutmann, who is on a mission to find the very best pubs in the UK and to define the essence of the ‘true’ pub.
Featuring a wide range of guests (mainly Rob’s mates), we’ll be visiting pubs the length and breadth of the country, bedding into the very best of them, and chatting about our lives lived in and around boozers.
The first season of the Pub Crawlers focuses on the North of England, taking in Chester, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, and even a brief foray to the north side of the Midlands in Nottingham.
Plug yourself in to the ongoing conversation as it disappears down all manner of tenuously pub-related worm holes, with your new mates at TPC. And you don’t need a pint to enjoy us, but it might help…
