THERE is much talk these days of the imminent ‘death’ of the public house.

There are probably fewer than 50,000 pubs in Britain, half the number there was when I took the foam off my first pint.

A recent article in a national newspaper reckoned they were closing at the rate of four a week.

Various reasons for this decline are put forward – cheap supermarket booze, the smoking ban, heavy ale tax, and rent rises by the big pub companies (with a view, some say, to closing the pub and developing the site for something more lucrative).

I think it’s a shame that traditional pubs are having a hard time of it.

But I’m inclined to think that because, like many of my generation, I spent much of my youth and spare cash propping up bars.

Every pint I drink in a ‘proper’ pub now comes with a thimbleful of nostalgia.

I’m moderately sanguine about change. The good pubs will survive. A boozer on every street corner was probably an unsustainable idea in the long run.

On the rise these days is a different kind of hostelry that, to my mind, can barely be described as a pub.

They are big-scale businesses, efficiently run by people who have been on management and catering courses.

Some attempt has been made to maintain an historical link between these houses and traditional pubs by calling them ‘gastro-pubs’ but the latter are pubs in the traditional sense no more than a whale is a fish.

When the Examiner was published in Ramsden Street, you could nip round the corner into the Albert Hotel in a rainstorm without getting wet. The Albert’s only concession to gastro-pubbery was a bag of peanuts – you could have salted or plain – and pie and peas with mint sauce on Friday evenings. It was quite a day when they weakened and started selling crisps.

The Albert was, and is, a real pub, an archetype. We journalists spent what was considered by some to be too much time drinking halves of Bass mild in there.

Not everyone knew your name – that’s just nonsense spread by the writers of the Boston-based 1980s comedy Cheers.

But people knew where to find journalists if they had a story and since the place was up to the rafters with councillors, lawyers, musicians and people looking for their 15 minutes of fame, it was a place where business of all sorts could be conducted.

It was rare to return to one’s desk without some juicy piece of information to follow up and turn into a story.

The Albert was also a place for the sharp-tongued to hone their skills. A senior journalist, seriously in his cups one night, was lambasted by a former Borough mayor over his handling of a controversial council decision.

The hack gathered his wits. An expectant silence descended. He grasped the councillor’s lapel for support and rocked unsteadily back and forth on his heels, summoning what we had every reason to suspect would be a retort of thunderous acuity.

What came forth was: “Why don’t you (buzz) off?”

Thus was born what is still known among older and retired Examiner types as the founding riposte of the Albert School of Wit and Repartee.