​NEWCASTLE PUBS

I ve always opposed capital punishment; yes even for playing bagpipes , but every time I see those talentless twats Ant and Dec I'm off to B and Q for some rope and 2 by 4 to build a scaffold. I almost choked on my microwaved meal when I saw them presenting a history of Tyneside. Two pretty boy twats pretending to be Simon Schama. For Christ’s sake couldn’t one of the lazy media studies graduates swanning about in Tyne Tees have found someone with a vague academic pedigree from Northumbria University to present it, oh no actually they couldn’t, that’s an oxymoron of ‘military intelligence’ magnitude. Ok, what about someone with a history degree, fuck no let’s find two wooden-tops who’s main exposure to history was acting [in the very loosest sense of the word] an a kid’s soap filmed in an old building. Breathtaking, well done Tyne Tees.

 

Now dear reader, the above is reason alone for avoiding The Lodge - ownership is shared between the aforementioned glimmer twins and Ultimate Leisure's successors, purveyors of drink to hen parties and the consequences are entirely predictable. Take a fine old banking hall and convert it into a deafening swill palace. Amazingly this multi storey skip frequently has queues forming on a Saturday night. That said the queues tend to fill with rows of Bigg Market refugees sporting their best snide Henry Lloyd and dodgy Rockports or peroxide white short skirts with matching hair.

 

If you actually make it inside you’re blessed in some ways; the ear splitting sound system seems to have been borrowed from the US army, who’d tested it encouraging men with turbans to confess their misdeeds. Whilst the music is inevitably the same crap we always hear from this week's bimbo band it has the merit of completely eliminating the charver squawks and grunts as the clientele try to decide on their options for the exchange of bodily fluids.

 

If you avoid the horrors of Friday and Saturday nights and match days then you can enjoy the sensation of being a pea sitting on one of Keith Moon’s drums - being bounced around by sound waves in a huge space. A busy night gives you opportunity to be jostled, have your drink spilled and possibly be assaulted.

 

Vile, big, loud, vulgar, expensive, filthy [both customers and premises]. A recipe for a tip top night out in England’s party capital. I'd rather drink my pint through the knickers Jade Goody wore when waddling the London marathon than spend more than a second in this hell hole.

 

Mind you I’ve just had a great idea, one I d pay to watch. Instead of the usual semi-legal glass collectors we see let's give Ant and Dec something more suited to their talents; an ill fitting T shirt and a job picking up the unconsumed swill and diced carrots left in glasses by the poor, brain dead sods who contribute to this pit’s bottom line. Just imagine it, standing on that mezzanine floor and tipping puke on ‘em. The queue starts here !