Al Murray - The Pub Landlord

Born: Some time in 1968, on the stairs by where they keep the crisps. The Landlord’s father then held a lock-in that broke the British and Commonwealth Land Lock-In Record with a 77 hour lock-in, a record that remains uncontested, though there is a bar in Bendigo, Vic, Australia that claims to have stayed open for 78 hours, but the validity of this lock-in is disputed as the staff were all unconscious, and because the licensing laws aren’t as strict in Australia.
His mother, Dorothy, is vague about the Guv’nor’s actual birthday, party due to the lock-in, partly due to the fact she doesn’t care, but she knows that it was “before they put that bloke on the moon, and after the Beatles went off the boil”.
Height: 6’ 3”. Says the Guv’nor: “That’s right, I measure my height in feet and inches, but will they arrest me and make me a metric martyr? Come on Brussels, I’ll see you in Court!”
Formative years: For the first four years of his life the Guv’nor played by the roaring blue gas fire in the snug bar, crawling around the floor between the legs of the bar stools, with a whippet and a greyhound – Princess and Lightning – and on occasion was heard to call the dogs Mummy and Daddy. “To this day I find it hard not to roll around on the carpet with my legs in the air when someone tickles my tummy.”
Favourite colour: Red, white and blue. “But only if arranged in a complicated serious of crosses and diagonals, not in three stripes like on the French flag.”
First love: Lager. Flirted with bitter, but came back to the gold stuff after about four months of gastric complications. “Beer – the reason many of us are here, after all.”
Education: Aged eleven, the Guv’nor gained a scholarship to attend Landlord Academy, for his seven year training as a fully qualified Publican. Here he honed his skills: he majored in Crisp-Flow, and worked on the team that specified the recipe for the perfect Ploughman’s lunch. The Academy boasts the rare honour of being the only college in the country that has not been made a university. “No one pours a pint like an Academy man – you can see it in the way he tilts the glass.”
Family: The Landlord’s father died when he was forty five, his allotted two score years and five complete, a lifetime of pints poured and Ploughmen lunched. Wife – divorced – then tracked down to Italy living with Hans, the Guv’nor of Die Achtung Spitfeur, a pub in Berlin. Has since left Hans: whereabouts unknown. Before Hans she had been living with Marcel, the Guv’nor of La Tete du Roi in Paris. She has with him the Landlord’s son Carlsberg [born 1994], whom the Guv’nor has not seen in six years. “I miss my boy that’s all.”