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  3. 64p in 1983. Unlike @thecheshirecat my mates and I didn’t wait until we were 18. When I was 18 in 1985 a bunch of us went on holiday to Bath, staying at the uni student accommodation, and I remember being taken aback that a pint in a nightclub cost £1.

  4. Can’t remember. Most of my early drinking was done in parks from big blue plastic bottles, as is correct and proper. I didn’t drink in pubs regularly until after uni, and most of the early pint drinking was on student prices. 90p for fosters or any bitter, £1.20 for Stella and Kronenbourg. 90p a shot for spirits. 20p for half a coke, 40p a pint. This would’ve been 1996.

    This meant you could get pretty thoroughly battered for well under a tenner, and I’m just grateful that I was young and resilient. My liver must’ve taken a hammering: 3-5 pints was so standard an evening that it didn’t even count as drinking.

    I do remember people talking in hushed tones of outrage about how a pint in London could sometimes run you £2.50, though.

  5. Getting used to the huge differences in prices in different places is all part of growing up and being British (probably). Is that man with a barrowload of banknotes staging an historical re-enactment of the economic collapse of Weimar Germany, or merely going to buy a round in a hotel bar?

  8. By the fourth form, a pint of keg could be had for about two bob*, but by the time I started camping out in bars on a regular and extended basis, i.e. at university, a decent pint of ale (Bass or Royal Oak, by preference) was about 15p a pint. At the same time I recall that a pint of rough (from the Jolly Porter) was 12.5p a pint, complete with extra bits floating in it. Monumental hangover material, but cheap enough and strong enough to stun an impoverished student. Rat-arsed for less than a quid.

    * a florin, in the old parlance.

  9. I honestly don’t remember those sneaky pints price as I snuck out of bounds from school, to the basement bar of the Esplanade Hotel in Eastbourne, so my legal bingeing was based on Youngs Special @ 16p a pint in the hospital and med school bar. Heavily subsidised, I guess, as the pints of Ruddles cost 30p at the Royal George at the weekends when the hospital bar was shut. A pound, in the week at least, could certainly get you well on today to the custom and practice of 8 by 8. Did me no harm, he says, from the locked ward of the Korsakow unit………

    • In my nursing days we’d frequently have to give pabrinex injections to some of our over imbibing patients (very strong B vitamins). You had to warn them that it turns your urine a florescent yellow colour and if one of us forgot to tell the patient then you’d often get screams an hour or so later from worried, detoxing patients who discovered this novelty for themselves.

  11. I’m not sure, I bought my first beer in a pub at 16 and really can’t remember. A bit of googling says it was about 20p. But I remember a pint going over 50p in 1980 which meant I had to break another quid to buy my round whilst out with a mate which was annoying.

  12. 38p, apparently, for a pint of Tennants lager in 1977 – strictly speaking, I was still illegal at that point, sneaking in the lounge bar of the Malletsheugh Inn, on the road to Kilmarnock (now a motorway)…Clarkston was dry, so you had to walk a bit for a sneaky pint.

  13. According to my calculations, if you apply annual inflation of 5.5% over 38 years to the original 60p – you get to about 4.59 a pint which is about right I think (?). So what the last 38 years has taught me is that when you retire, you need your annual beer allowance to grow by at least 5.5% a year.

  14. A whole quid as I recall. And 20 fags was £1.50.
    A boozy night out for a tenner.
    I earned £70 a week.
    10 quid to mum
    10 quid in the car
    Maybe some music bought.
    The rest on booze and fags

  15. I remember a student Union special in 1980 of 4 pints for a quid.
    I don’t remember either the last time I had a pint in a pub nor how much I paid.
    I do look back and think how easy we had compared to kids (I.e anyone under 30) today.

  17. I turned 18 in 1985 and a pint was around 70p from memory. It soon shot up to a £1 but then the local clubs in my hometown on the outskirts of Glasgow did 50/50 nights, wherein entrance was 50p and drinks were 50p. Carnage ensued.

  18. An interesting question. I remember when we went decimal in 1971 a pint which had been 1/10d in a favourite pub in Cheltenham (I was a student), went to 10p on decimalisation day. The SU bar would have been a bit cheaper. I had been going into pubs at home for a few years, so I’m guessing it would have been around 1/6d when I started..? Those London prices, eh?

    I started work teaching on 1972, and used to drink Brakspear’s lovely bitter in Oxfordshire at 13p.

  21. Back in 1975, when I was 16, it was 20p a pint for McEwan’s scotch as I recall and 20p for 20 Regal. A night out for a quid. I earned £20 a week at the time.

  22. When I was in 5th year at school, instead of games* on a Wednesday afternoon you could opt to do odd jobs, gardening etc. at old people’s houses.
    We’d leave school at about 12:30 and head for the One Crown in the lower end of Watford High Street, where the landlord was happy to serve us despite our being in school uniform as long as we stayed in the back room out of sight, playing bar billiards. After a few games and a couple of pints, we’d walk to where we were supposed to be working and mow some grass, do a bit of weeding or clean some windows and be given tea and biccies. Sometimes we even got cake. Those were the good times.
    No idea now what the beer cost. It was 1966, so it would have been pennies. I was able to easily afford it out of my pocket money.

    * Rugby in winter, cricket in summer for 1st and 2nd years. Cross-country running in winter, tennis in summer were also available for 3rd and 4th years. Community service was also available for non-sporty 5th years and above all the year round.

  23. When I started at University in Bradford in 1983 you could certainly get a pint of Tetleys for 50p.

    In my second year my room cost £8 a week in a shitty student house.

    Happy days!

  26. Looking at photos from the time, none of us in my group of friends looked remotely 18 – but we had a least two years of unchallenged illegal pub-going. Not sure how diligent landlords are now.

  28. I can’t even remember what happened last week let alone the cost if beer when I was 18…

    I would have been 18 in 1985 and Google says the average was 77p a pint. Being in Sheffield it was probably a little cheaper than that.

  29. It’s the old joke, innit.

    Man1 – Any regrets in life?
    Man2 – I wish I had drank more beer when it was 15p a pint!

    I have either 11p or 14p for my first pint. Can’t be sure which. It would be 1975 and I was 17. It was a working man’s club, therefore well subsidised.

    • Oh yeah, when I was still at school I used to have a pint at lunchtime in a working man’s club in Plymouth, while I worked as a sorter in the Sorting Office during the postal bedlam that is Christmas. That was what I did at Christmas, both in 1973 and 1974 (aged 17-18) – I think either of those price points is about right for the year – probably the lower of the two, as all the money in those establishments went on the beer, the crisps, the pickled eggs and the cheese rolls – they had little patience with fripperies!

  31. I can still remember not long after moving to Cirencester in the 70s going to a country pub and ordering a pint of Stella. I gave the barman a 50p piece and stood at the bar for about 10 minutes waiting for my change. Eventually he came over to me and asked me what I wanted. I said “my change.” “What did you have?” he asked. “A pint of Stella” I replied. “How much did you give me?” he asked. “50p” I replied. “Yeah, that’s right. Stella’s 50p a pint” came the reply.

    I was shocked. Fifty pee a pint??? What sort of world was I living in where a pint of lager was 50p? How was I supposed to make my wages last a week at those prices?

  32. Does anywhere maintain the tradition of a Public bar with slightly cheaper prices than the Lounge bar? The last place I remember seeing this was The Old Black Bull in Preston in the mid 80s [dusts dandruff off Real Ale Wanker beret and sets forth to seek out a pint of foaming nut brown ale].

  33. Can’t remember the first ever, but I do recall that when I went to Uni in 1978 (when I’d been a legal drinker for 3 months, but going in pubs for about 3 years), in my hall of residence bar a bottle of Newcastle Brown (it was still drinkable back then, rather than the radioactive chemical fizz it is these days) was 34p.

    We used to drink a lot (in terms of both frequency and volume) in the bar of the ladies’ hall next door, where they had the full range of Sam Smith’s bottled ales at 40p a pop.

  34. Never did the underage drinking bit so started going out regularly in 1987 when I turned 18.
    I was a lager drinker then and Fosters had just appeared in the local. 70p a pint.
    The British Legion clubs lager (can’t remember the brand) was about 50p a pint.
    A fiver and you were hammered!

    • I started going to the Centurion in Chelmsley Wood and the Bradford Arms in Castle Bromwich when I was 17. At the time I was a smoker and I recall being able to get 5 pints and 10 no 6 for leas than a quid and having enough for a bag of chips on thr way home. Brew X1 was the beer of choice . It sounds like an absolute bargain but my first wage was £14.50 per week as an insurance renewal clerk.All of my mates had apprenticeships mainly with the Jag, British Leyland, Jensen or GKN. Their wages were about half of mine but within 18 months to 2 years they were earning significantly more.

      • The Centurion………. Fuuuuuuuuuuck, respect. Working in/at Marston Green in the very early 80s, even driving past scared me. (But then I hardly talk the talk, do 1?)

        • @retropath2 if you were known there it was okay although there is no way I would go in there now. Understand it has gone down the nick but that is relative as never sure it was ever salubrious. The licencing laws were that liberal we could even go in there in our school uniforms and get served.

  36. I started University in 1973. The College bar sold bitter at 13p and Mild at 11p. What marvellous times they were

    I remember the occasion, probably 1979, when my older Brother took the train up to Newcastle. I collected him and drove us to Stranraer, or maybe Cairnryan in order to spend a few days with our parents in Belfast. We parked the car and went over to Larne as foot passengers on a day sailing. Our Dad met us at the other end. Since we didn’t have to drive we enjoyed a few pints of Guinness. I remember that it was £1 a pint. I thought that was outrageous. The brother who lived in that London thought it was his birthday

  37. £1 a pint in Sheffield in 1992.
    If you’d told me I’d be paying 600% more 30 years later…

    Pack of fags also £1(cheap brand). The price rise of those stopped me smoking, alas not worked with booze yet

  38. My first pint as a student in Nottingham in 1973 was Shipstones at 12.5p. You had to be careful where you bought Shippos, as it had a bit of a reputation for being very variable and often resulted in a dash to the bog.

    • Nothing much (apart from the price) had changed in the following 9 years. Though it goes to illustrate how rampant inflation was in the 70s, that it was something like 4 times that nominal price 9 years later.

  39. I think I read in a book by Jeremy Paxman (sic) that the value of money remained unchanged for hundreds of years. It was only when we moved to industrial revolution times that inflation became a thing. So a loaf of bread costing half a groat in 1298 would have still cost half a groat in 1683.

  40. 1975/76. About 25p a pint or just under. Tellingly could go out with £1. 4 pints. Walk there. Walk home.

    Started full time work in 1978. Salary pre tax £125 per month as a newbie apprentice.

    500 pints per month equivalent. What’s the Wetherspoons equivalent. £4 pint? £2000 per month equivalent cost.

    If I am interpreting this correctly the price of beer has outstripped wages as an equipment entry level salary NMW wouldn’t fund 500 pints per week!

    • Based on NMW for 20 year old. £6.56/hr.

      £1,060 per month. 265 pint equivalent at £4 per pint (?). Roughly twice the price now compared to then.

  41. I’ve been thinking about this, and I think the first (underage) pint I bought was 34p. A few years later, keg p*ss was around 44p in the students’ union, and a decent pint nearby over 50p. Dad’s family were publicans and I remember him saying that there was always a blip in takings when you couldn’t buy a couple of pints for half a crown/a round for 10/-.

    Occasionally, I look at the price of small items and go ‘that Kit-Kat is 17 shillings’. I have had my tea, and I have had visitors. . .

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