![]() Anyway, his method suited who he was, and the business he ran. Jack worked on a human scale, perhaps not as common today. But Jack went the extra mile (literally) for his customers, and staff. But was it a public relations gesture? No doubt, in part. The reporter wrote Jack was toast of the Crown that night. Pub regulars surround them, dimpled glasses in hand, full. A woman, probably Telfer, is pictured in the Evening Post seated on a cask between the car and an exultant Jack. The lads need for a darts match…And let’s face it. Asked why he embarked on a long, oddball trip Jack replied: Beer, Jack, and Roller duly arrived at destination and the Crown was back in business. His hotel there sold the same beer as the Crown 150 miles away, with extra in the cellar.*Īt the hotel Jack loaded two casks in the Roller and promptly headed for Marlow, making a total journey of some 200 miles. Jack got the Roller out and started east for Skegness, by the sea. ![]() Maybe there wasn’t one close enough to hand, or more likely all the draymen were on strike. The brewery that supplied the Crown had beer, but couldn’t get it to the pub. It turned out there was a draymen’s strike, a dispute over wages. His new employee Maggie Telfer was managing the Crown and all was going well. He painted it psychedelic-but didn’t drive a Morris Minor, in other words. Remember when Beatle John Lennon bought a Roller? It was a time when people who made good were not afraid to show their success. Jack probably had other holdings as well, maybe in Corby. By English standards these places are not choc-a-bloc: they take in, if you look on a map, a good chunk of east-central England. He also owned a pub in Marlow called the Crown, to the south and inland again. Jack, who (I said) lived in Corby, owned a hotel in Skegness, Lincolnshire to the east on the sea. As the tale will show he thought small, too, in ways that got him ahead no less. He “thought big”, said one figure in the story. Jack, unlike many in country districts, had done rather well. It concerns a pub owner, Jack Humphries, who lived in Corby, Northamptonshire. Such is a story I will tell today, based on a news account in the Reading Evening Post, 6 April 1973. Often these tales escape the attentions of the trade press and standard beer histories. Sometimes the good stories of pubs and beer involve just a few people, in small localities, outside the great whirl of events.
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