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Friday's Bar, at the Adelphi, Liverpool

THINGS don’t always go according to plan in the Pub Column. Yours Truly had arranged to meet Grantie of the Echo and his girlfriend Tugboat Cath at this week’s initial choice which, for the sake of all concerned, shall remain unnamed. Read

The Baltic Fleet, Wapping, Liverpool

The Baltic Fleet alehouse opposite the waterfront is one of Liverpool’s greatest. Read

Old Post Office pub, School Lane, Liverpool

‘WE APOLOGISE for any inconvenience caused.” This catch-all catchphrase on the Big Dig, sorry, on Lord Street, always brings a sardonic smile to the face. Read

The Saddle, Dale Street, Liverpool

"BEEN there, done that one” could be the catchprase for this Pub Column on its three years-plus sojourn around our finest alehouses. Read

AFTER the cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival – the latest shambles perpetrated by the Capital of Culture bureaucrats – the Pub Column wanted to get as far away as possible from the Pool this week to drown its sorrows.

The Travellers Rest, Higher Bebington

Somewhere quiet and soothing to assuage the instinctive need to prowl the city, hunt down over-paid civic suit people and deliver a satisfying hoof up a well-padded jacksy. Read

THERE must be one week in which the Pub Column takes a break from a protracted course in catching hepatitis and finds an alternative to simply propping up the bar.

A respectable P artist!

So this week Yours Truly paid an alcohol-free visit to Princes Park to see Bernie Carroll, the man who has given a more respectable meaning to that irreverent expression, the p--- artist. Read

SOMETHING near to a minor miracle occurred last Saturday.

That thingy that’s hot and yellow reappeared. Read

Rose and Crown, Lower Bebington

YOURS truly needed cheering up this week. The monsoon rains had soaked through the shoes causing a severe case of trenchfoot and further aggravating a pickled onion-sized bunion on the right foot. Read

The Admiral, Rock Park, Rock Ferry, Wirral

A SLEEPING giant in a forgotten land. That’s the Admiral, a marvellous pub brimming with maritime history. Read

THERE’S nothing better for the weary shopper than to find a cosy pub to lay down their Scouse briefcases (that’s plassie bags to you, missus) – and chew the fat.

The Carnarvon Castle, Liverpool

One of the classics in Liverpool city centre is the Carnarvon Castle. Its equivalent over the water in Birkenhead is the Garrick Snug, in the Grange Road shopping centre. Tucked in like an old sock down the back of the settee between the con- crete monoliths of J-D Junior and TK Maxx superstores, the 19th-century Garrick has survived all the changes going on around it, a bit like watching Rod Taylor fast-forwarding his gizmo in the film adaptation of HG Wells’s The Time Machine. Read

Drink Up Stand Up

THE American writer Don Marquis once declared: “Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into.” Read

The Belgrave, St Michael’s

GRANTIE was still in a state of shock. The occasional Pub Column companion had just popped into the branch of Ethel Austin, in Aigburth Road, to buy an extra cheapo pair of disposable glasses (as you do) when a most disturbing sight greeted him. Read

Blue Anchor Pub, Aintree

THE people of Aintree can be forgiven for being a little blasé about living within a short gallop of one of the greatest sporting events. Read

Blue Anchor, Aintree

THE people of Aintree can be forgiven for being a little blase; about living within a short gallop of one of the greatest sporting events. Read

The Tap, Eastham village

FINDING great pubs around Merseyside isn’t like delving into some bottomless pit. There’s a fear that at some stage there won’t be any more new ones to choose from and this column, to paraphrase Rutger Hauer’s Roy the Replicant in sci-fi classic Blade Runner, “will be lost like tears in rain. Time to die.” Read