The Mucky Pup, Angel, Islington

This is one of my favourite pubs in the world. I moved to Islington about a year ago with great plans to explore all the local pubs and then stumbled accross the MP (I like to abreviate it now) and felt no need to find anywhere else.

The bar staff are wonderful, always up for a chat during the week and calm and friendly if a little harrased on busy days. The music is great, there's a pool table and darts board. The odd spontaneous game of killer pool that breaks out is always entertaining. The customers are friendly, the type of place where you chat to people you don't know rather than view them with suspicion.

It's not fancy, but if you want a fancy wine bar with gleaming bars and attentive staff being fakely polite serving you, there are plenty of bland generic places on Upper Street.

19 Jan 2012 12:07

Uncle Henry's, Newbury

I know it is crazy to review a pub that no longer exists, but I have to defend it. This pub was the best pub I have ever known, and what made it was the people. This pub was like going to a house party except that you had to go to a bar to get your drinks. The comments above just show prejudice against people with long hair, tattoos and piercings. Contrary to what is written, it was not a den of the unemplyable and the vast majority of people (even the few unemployed ones) were highly intelligent. Among my friends from there I count a satellite engineer (myself), a neuro-surgeon, tax auditor, financial consultant, couple of council workers, many computer people and many shop and bar staff.

The atmosphere here was always welcoming and understanding, true, everyone knew everyone and hence if someone new walked it, especially if dressed smart, people would turn round and stare, but if you stuck it out for 5 minutes and were friendly to the bar staff and the regulars, you would be accepted as much as anyone else.

True it could get boisterous, a couple of the lads would regularly end up play wrestling and if you happened to position yourself in the way of the pool table, you would have to be asked to move, but there were never fights, there was never the anger and aggression that you see in so many pubs, there was not the prejudice shown by some of the above posters that because you look different you must be an unemployable drug addict.

This pub was fantastic and it is very very sadly missed

14 Jun 2010 23:06

Molly Malone's, Hitchin

This is my local and I love it, one of the friendliest pubs I have ever been to, moved to Hitchin a few months ago and thought it would take me ages to make new friends, but I stopped off in Molly's and instantly made a large circle of friends. Open mic nights on Thursday are consistently good and some excellent bands play at weekends. ApPool table, book club, beer garden of sorts and so forth, all make this a great community pub

14 Jun 2010 22:51