My Local

Boaby: What would ye like?
Victor: We would like it tae be warmer in here.
Jack: And for the decor tae be a little mair invitin.
Victor: And for you to be an eighteen-year old bird wi' big tits.
Jack: We would like tae come in here and no want tae kill 'wirselves.
Boaby: Tae drink?

— Jack, Victor, and Boaby the Barman, in the Clansman, Still Game

Public houses, or "pubs" are a cherished British and Irish institution, and are rather different from North American bars (or, at least, the TV versions of said bars). They're much better lit, more comfortable, better furnished, and serve hearty, home-cooked meals ("pub grub") as well as the usual mixed drinks and pints of ale. They're open to all ages until a certain hour, and they close much earlier. You only have to be eighteen to have alcohol^note Sixteen in the UK if ordered with a meal and a legal adult present. Service generally requires going up to the bar to order. The closest American equivalent is the Local Hangout.

The local pub (or "local") is frequently the glue that knits together a community or neighbourhood, and is an obvious focal point for the cast of many British Series.

The owner of the pub, who holds the pub license is called the landlord or landlady, or the publican. Patrons also enjoy playing cribbage, darts, Foosball (table football) and snooker, watching rugby and football on TV, and testing their trivia knowledge with a pub quiz. Some pubs have a microphone and small PA system so singer-songwriters and small groups can perform. In the 1970s, the genre of pub rock developed through these shows.

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Examples:

Britain

Comic Books

• Time in a Bottle, a Good-Guy Bar in Paul Cornell's Knight and Squire.
• The White Horse, a centuries-spanning pub frequented by Morpheus in The Sandman (1989).
• The Rose and Crown, Andy Capp's home away from home.

Fan Works

• This Time Round is this for the whole Doctor Who Expanded Universe.

Films — Live-Action

• From the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy:
  • The Winchester in Shaun of the Dead.
  • The Porters' pub in Hot Fuzz.
  • A whole dozen pubs in The World's End as part of an epic pub crawl, including the eponymous The World's End. Which is not an unusually high number of pubs for an average sized town in Britain or Ireland. There are towns that could comfortably seat all the locals in their several locals.
• The St. Swithin's medical students from the Doctor... Series all go to the same pub to drink pints. They call the bartender "the Padre" so the patients won't think the doctors are going down the pub.
• The Black Prince in Kingsman: The Secret Service, it's the setting of two bar brawls.

Literature

• Harry Potter has the Leaky Cauldron, the Three Broomsticks and the Hog's Head, wizarding versions of the British pub. The Muggle pub the Hanged Man is where the locals of Little Hangleton gather to gossip about the Riddles' murder and conclude that Frank Bryce is responsible.
• The Horse and Groom in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when the Earth is intact. Known only as "that pub there" in some versions. It makes an unexpected reappearance in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
• The Oxford Bar in the Rebus books/TV series - a real pub (not a bar) in Edinburgh.
• In Songs of Innocence, the Little Vagabond wishes that church could be more like the local alehouse, with a warm fire, beer and merriment.
• The Wheatsheaf in David Langford's The Leaky Establishment and "Leaks". The nuclear weapon scientists who make up the clientele have taken one look at the sign (which presumably looks something like this◊) and renamed it "The Mushroom Cloud".
• The Flying Swan, frequently used as a rallying point/sanctuary in the Brentford "Trilogy".
• The White Hart, from Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart.
  • Based on the real world pub, The White Horse, where London SF writers and fans used to have a weekly get-together in the 1940s and 50s.
• While not discussed much in the main books, the local pub for residents of Hackenbeck, Sodor is a charming place called The Three Beetles. Good food and drink, good atmosphere, handy for the train station, and it even has a bowling green. Ffarquhar also has The Toby, formerly The Toby Jug until it was renamed after Toby the engine in recognition of the time he surprised a disliked policeman.
• The Angler's Rest, in P. G. Wodehouse's "Mr. Mulliner" stories.
• In Animal Farm, Mr. Jones drinks at the Red Lion.
• Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, with a vampire, a Time Traveller, an invincible planet-destroying robot and (briefly) his somewhat more vincible master, a talking dog, whatever in the hell Callahan and Mary are, just all kinda hanging out and making dreadful puns to Jake's soundtrack.
• The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have several; the most well known is The Prancing Pony in Bree where the hobbits first meet Aragorn, though the Green Dragon in Bywater is also mentioned.
• The Blue Boar, Woolfont Magna, in the Village Tales series ("S. Kellow, Licensee, Sole Prop. :: A Free House :: Real Ales & Ciders"). On any given evening, you may well find the Duke being affable, the Rector walloping all comers at snooker, the District poacher being chucked out, the senior "team curate" Fr. Campion – or the parish organist, his brother, if Fr. Campion is defending his darts title – leading a sing-along at the piano, Supreme Chef Teddy Gates escaping his gastropub-hotel for a pie and a pint, and bewildered tourists trying to penetrate the barrier of Mr. Kellow's West Country accent. On Quiz Nights, always in aid of one or another local cause, you will find most of the District tackling questions an Oxford Senior Common Room couldn't agree on, with the fortunate among them having signed on to a team captained by the Headmaster of the Free School, the Rector, or the Duke. The warm, friendly Old Bridge, run by Mr. Kellow's cousin Jack Burridge, fulfills a similar function for the Downland parishes, mostly for Meaningfully Taciturn (but warm and friendly) farmers and water bailiffs and so on: river bailiff Fred Beckett, and his dog Toby, are regulars, as is Dr. Molly Hillier the chief environmental officer. As of Evensong, Mr. Kellow's son is working on reopening and restoring the old Woolpack – briefly and disastrously bought by "vurriners" from another part of the County and renamed "The Ring of Bells" – down in Woolfont Crucis. The characters spent a good deal of time down the local, really....
• Several of these appear in Trainspotting, notably where Begbie starts a Bar Brawl. Porno sees Sick Boy inherit The Port Sunshine from his aunt and Jonty's subplot in A Decent Ride kicks off from an incident involving his girlfriend, another man, and a line of cocaine in the toilets of a pub known as The Pub With No Name.
• Several real-life Oxford pubs are mentioned in the Inspector Morse novels.

Live-Action TV

• The Drovers Arms, or "the Droves", from All Creatures Great And Small.
• The Canley Arms, from The Bill.
• The Lamb and Flag from Bottom (The same series also mentioned 'The Dog and Handgun'). It's unclear if this is supposed to be the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden (one of the oldest surviving pubs in London, dating back to the reign of George III).
• The Rovers Return, from Coronation Street
• The unnamed wine bar in Coupling.
• The Lamb and Flag (presumably the one in Covent Garden) is mentioned in Season 1, Episode 4 of The Crown (set in 1952), in which Venetia Scott's flatmate Mary seems all ready to go, but Venetia has this to say about the crowd at the pub:
  Venetia Scott: You mean going to the Lamb and Flag with you, sitting at the bar? Twinkling our ankles at every unremarkable young man in the room? Then letting those men buy us enough drinks for us to bring them home, only to have their unremarkability confirmed to us again? No, thanks.
• The Crab and Lobster from Doc Martin.
• The Grapes in Early Doors.
• The Queen Victoria ("The Queen Vic", or just "The Vic"), from EastEnders
• The Woolpack, from Emmerdale
• The Dog in the Pond, from Hollyoaks.
• The Jolly Sailor in Howards' Way, which is a real-life historical pub.
• Eddie's Bar, from Hustle.
• The Railway Arms in Life On Mars. The Trafford Arms is also an example.
• The Mucky Duck in Man About the House
  • Which resulted in the American adaptation Three's Company having the very British-local-seeming Regal Beagle.
• The Crown in Men Behaving Badly
• The college canteen and in a few episodes, a pub, in Mind Your Language
• The Nag's Head from Only Fools and Horses
• The Oval Tavern in Peep Show
• The Aigburth Arms, Lister's watering hole in Red Dwarf; a real establishment where Rob Grant and Doug Naylor drank in their student days.
• Pommeroy's Wine Bar in Rumpole of the Bailey. It's a wine bar because they're barristers, and barristers are supposed to be toffs who don't drink beer.
• 'The Jockey' of Shameless (UK)
• The Clansman in Still Game
• The Plumber's Arms in Teachers (2001) is the teachers' pub of choice (by informal agreement the students do not go in that pub while the teachers do not go in theirs). They try various other drinking venues, but always default back to the Plumber's, practically every night.
• The Kebab and Calculator from The Young Ones
• The Archer from Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
• The Grantham Arms in Downton Abbey is shown to be one of these for the working-class characters. Makes sense, given it's the only one in the village.
• In the Flesh: The local pub in Roarton. Local vicar Oddie derisively tells the visiting MP Maxine Martin that this is where she’d find most of her constituents.
• The Three Cripples from Oliver Twist becomes the local of most of Charles Dickens's characters in Dickensian.
• Three from Call the Midwife:
  • The Hand and Shears is the most common one mentioned, apparently being the one favoured by the families of the central characters (both Dr Turner and Fred appear to be relatively frequent patrons).
  • The Master's Arms is another one of these in Poplar, run by Julia Masterson (the obstetric patient in S02E06, who inherited it from her estranged father).
  • The Black Sail is a pub for the dockers and sailors in Poplar, run by Nurse Valerie Dyer's family. She lives above the pub with her family (a special dispensation from Nonnatus, which usually requires its nurses to live in the convent even if they aren't nuns).
• The Crown & Anchor from Ted Lasso.

Radio

• The Bull, from The Archers.
• The White Rabbit, in Big Finish Doctor Who spin-offs, is UNIT's local. The Doctor's also been known to pop in ... since the 15th century.
• Whenever a pub was mentioned in Hello Cheeky, it was either the Duck & Pullet or the evil variant, the Cock & Wallet.

Video Games

• The Hanged Man tavern from Dragon Age II, where at least two of your party members always hang out, and others frequently come to drink with them, including your own character.
• While we never actually see it, Lara Croft - of all people, considering her background and wealth - in Tomb Raider (2013) reveals she learnt to bandage wounds while working in a pub called The Nine Bells. She wanted to pay her own way through university instead of relying on her family money, but it's still a bizarre revelation.

Web Original

• The Crazy Cow Milk Bar in Stampy's Lovely World is described to be like an "old, traditional English pub", but it serves milk instead of alcohol. It even looks like an old, traditional pub, with the only weird thing in its design being the "crazy cow" face on the front of the bar.

Ireland

Live-Action TV

• Fitzgerald's in Ballykissangel, run by Assumpta Fitzgerald, the female lead.
• Tigh Tadhg in Ros na Rún.
• McCoy's in Fair City.
• The Crane Bar in Jack Taylor (Also a real pub in Galway.)
• Played for laughs in Father Ted with Vaughn's. Ted, having offended Craggy Island's Chinese community, is being hounded by the entire island for being racist. Having just dodged an egg thrown at him by an angry Craggy Island local, Ted takes refuge in the pub only to discover that it's the preferred drinking hole for Craggy Island's Chinese community.

Australia

Live-Action TV

• Imperial Hotel from Blue Heelers, where the police of the town went to relax.
• Neighbours always has a bar of some sort in the same area of the Lassiters complex: the Waterhole (destroyed in a gas explosion), Chez Chez (renamed after Cheryl's death), Lou's Place (burned down, with Lou starting a new business with Harold), The Scarlet Bar (Max left it with his ex-wife Stephanie, who named it after their son) and Charlie's (revamped in 2014) and eventually the Waterhole again.

Miscellaneous

Films — Animation

• In Ballerina, there is a scene where Felicie and Victor are dancing at an Irish pub... in 19th century PARIS.

Literature

• In Wicked, students at Shiz University often visit the Peaches and Kidney. Oz is based off 19th century America, but the Peaches and Kidney is a British-style pub that the main characters hang around during the university chapters.
• The Green Dragon in The Lord of the Rings is a Hobbitish pub in Bywater that is more or less explicitly modeled on the classic British form. This makes sense, given that the Shire generally is modeled on the English countryside Tolkien loved. The Ivy Bush, where Sam Gamgee's father is a regular, is a smaller such pub, located in Hobbiton. The Prancing Pony in Bree is also modeled on an English pub; while it gives off Bad Guy Bar vibes to the sheltered Shire-hobbits of Frodo's party at first, it turns out to be pretty ordinary (if unusual in serving both Hobbits and "Big People").
• There are many in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the most well known being the 'Mended Drum' (previously known as the 'Broken Drum') in Ankh-Morpork. In books featuring the Watch, usually the featured pub is 'The Bucket' - a pub in which no one wants to go to, and because of this, has become popular amongst the Watch because there would be no fights that they would have to break up.
  • And 'Biers' which is favored by Ankh-Morpork's "differently alive" community.

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