Cheers to that; Promoting beer and pubs sounds like fun. Alastair Gilmour finds one celebrity who takes it seriously - most of the time.

Byline: Alastair Gilmour

Continued

FOR a man who makes a living out of learning scripts, Neil Morrissey isn't particularly good with names. The Men Behaving Badly and Waterloo Road star - and the voice of Bob The Builder - may not remember what individual pubs are called but he can describe his favourites with a passion.

The sign above the door escapes him, but what matters is a pub's ambience, its welcome, its surroundings and, of course, its beer.

And, the North East is one of his favourite places to enjoy the heady experience.

"I love Newcastle. It has a great pub culture and I've got some really good friends there," he says. "I'll tell you my favourite alehouse; it's the one when you're walking out of town along the river with the city behind you and there's this brilliant pub up a little rise with a big window, looking back into town towards the new art gallery and all that. You're always well looked after, it's got a free jukebox, the sarnies are really good - so is the beer. Just a lovely pub.

"Another one I love is opposite the Jazz Club - and one of the best railway station pubs is in Newcastle. I love that bar. You can roll straight off the train straight into there; what a bloody beautiful place. It's the best railway pub in the country, man.

Brilliant." Neil is talking Free Trade Inn, Byker, and The Forth and The

Centurion in the city centre, reminiscing from the advantage of a fair amount of practical experience.

The story of the Morrissey Fox Brewery in North Yorkshire he started up with chef Richard Fox, was featured on Channel 4 last year and the pair's beers have since earned national supermarket distribution.

Now Neil, who is returning to Newcastle later this summer on tour with Rain Man, is the face of Proud of Pubs Week 2009, a campaign led by licensed industry newspaper The Publican which runs between July 11-19. It is a national initiative to spread the message that pubs are alive, they're something to be proud of, they're integral to Britain's physical and spiritual landscape and vital to our social fabric. In short, they're worth preserving.

A Proud of Pubs Bitter - brewed by Morrissey Fox - will enjoy extensive exposure around the nation's largest pub companies next month. The beer, with its ruby red tinge, was devised along the lines of a classic British bitter, striking a confident balance between sharp hop and fruit notes. Bramlea and New Zealand Riwake hops provide a memorable blackcurrant and citrus aroma, contrasted by a small amount of Hercules hops underlining its bitter flavour in a complex, satisfying and very accessible session bitter. "Proud of Pubs is a superb campaign," says Neil. "It's one of those things that's going to remind us that we have something to be proud of. Everybody always thinks back to their first time in a pub. It's one of those institutions that people don't notice until it's gone.

"There is nothing like the pub, it's a social and sensorial product. It's much better having a chat in the pub than sitting on your arse watching some game show. "There'll be the people who've been in wars; you meet old soldiers, then there's the doctor, the scriptwriter, the playwright, the banker - you'll find them. We're talking here about the seats of literary and intellectual discussions. Some of the best ideas and books in the world have been conceived over a few jars." Neil should know; several years ago he invested in - then subsequently sold - Brown's Hotel in Laugharne in South Wales where literary legend Dylan Thomas held court in the early 1950s. In the biography of her husband, Caitlin Thomas writes: "His drinking in Laugharne was his contact with people. He knew he needed that. Dylan was rarely invited into anyone's house.

His closest friends were the men he met in Brown's. He would sit with them in the bow window, looking up and down the street, and he more or less created Laugharne in Under Milk Wood ." So, as Neil observes, there's a direct link between beer and some of the most beautiful arrangements of words in the English language.

"It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea." Neil says: "I'm sure Dylan Thomas was rarely sober when he was working - he did like to play about with his brain a bit. There's a definite thing about beer drinking that gives you a bit of inspiration but obviously there comes a point where all your ideas turn to mush."