Defiant landlord of ‘London’s finest pub’ tells gov what to do with ‘smoking ban’
The landlord of the ‘best pub in London’ has delivered his damning verdict on the possible upcoming smoking ban.
Bryan Fitzsimons is the landlord at Skehans, which has for the past two years been named as the best pub in the capital by Time Out. Bryan told the Daily Star that despite not smoking himself, his pub – unless it became illegal – remained a place where “grown-ups” are allowed to “have a smoke if they want to and have a few drinks.”
He said: “It’s very frustrating. Very silly. I just think the market should be allowed to decide if people want to smoke in gardens or not.
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(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
If people come into my pub and they want to smoke, fine, and if people don’t like smoking in the garden they can go to a pub that doesn’t allow it.
“It should be up to the publicans whether they want a smoking pub or not.”
He was clear that he wasn’t speaking for all publicans, just in terms of his own pub, and added: “Obviously it’s not nice for a family to be there and there’s people smoking, but if there were pubs that didn’t allow smoking they would just go there, leave it up to publicans to decide.”
(Image: skehansfreehouse/Instagram)
He was confident that overall this possible ban would hurt pubs, and added “Again it’s just people telling us what to do.
“We’re kind of fed up with it, you know. They’re grown adults, they should be allowed to have a fag there’s so much nonsense going on at the minute – if you’re a grown adult and you want to have a cigarette, you should be allowed to have a cigarette and if people don’t like you smoking, they can go somewhere that doesn’t allow smoking. There’s plenty of places that don’t allow it.
“I just hate telling people what to do.” He lamented that a “small little group of people are kind of wrecking everyone’s fun.”
(Image: Instagram/skehansfreehouse)
He said it would be “great” if enough people were part of that group in order to encourage publicans to run some pubs smoke-free.
“There’d be a place for them, and then there’d be a place for people who just want to have fun, and behave like grownups and have a smoke if they want to and have a few drinks.”
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