Reelin' in the years: the 90s

The 1990s started with the seismic impact of the 'Beer Orders'. Designed to break the grip of the 'Big Six' brewers on British pubs, the legislation limited brewers to a tied estate of no more than two thousand pubs.The big brewers’ accountants decided that owning pubs was more profitable than making beer and divested their brewing operations rather than allowing competitors access to their estates. By the year 2000, foreign buyouts by Interbrew, Molson Coors, Heineken and Carlsberg saw British brewing infrastructure fall into the hands of multinationals. Pubs were transferred to non-brewing pub companies (pubcos) which had no limits on size. 

One new entrant grew rapidly in the transformed pub market. J.D. Wetherspoon had expanded by creating pubs from unconventional properties, like empty shops but began converting increasingly large venues in the 1990s. 

The Regal Moon in Rochdale was one of Wetherspoon’s first cinema conversions. In 1996, the building was restored to its original Art Deco glory, with a dummy of a cinema organist even added to preside over the bar area. The pub is a classic example of the scale and ambition of the low-cost chain’s landgrab in the nation’s town-centre drinking circuits.

While most Wetherspoons avoided music, other pubs offered no escape from mid-decade Britpop, with Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova” proving the soundtrack of many a lads’ night out.

Caffrey’s Irish Ale and John Smith’s exemplified “smoothflow” draught dispense and its in-can cousin, the widget. Whitbread tried to position its Manchester bitter, Boddington's, as appealing to both ale and lager drinkers. Its creamy head inspired a memorable advertising campaign featuring Mancunian model Melanie Sykes serving a pint of Boddies from an ice cream van, asking “Do you want a flake in that, love?”

Novelty flavours of dry roasted peanuts exploded — salt and vinegar, chilli and honey, and other variants appeared on cards behind the bar. Buy enough brightly coloured packets and you could create your own Cool Britannia Union Jack on the pub table.