Beverages: 7/10. Positives: Good Guinness, negatives: no Strongbow.
Snacks: 6/10. Limited. No bar snacks when asked. However, pub rolls are provided for £1, one flavour: Wedge of cheese and a slab of sweaty onion in a 10 day old bap. What else do you want?
Bar staff: 7/10. Positives: Friendly and female, keen to get us on the C&O rolls.
Atmosphere: 8/10. Dingy, smelly and grim. Positives: Dingy, smelly and grim. Pool table and bad pictures on the wall. Furniture mainly consists of "canteen" style paraphernalia. Negatives: No resident drunk spotted for character-based light entertainment. Hopefully it was his night off, maybe in rehab.
Clientele: 8/10. Varied. Positives: Wide range of locals including cockneys and the odd drunk Welshman from South Wales who knew allot about Brecon Jazz Festival, and had once had a fight in Hereford. There were also a few geeky looking chaps with massive Dennis Taylor style glasses, sipping halves to make us look handsome, witty and intelligent.
Negatives: Noticed some hard cockneys in the corner, who don't like Northerners "what speak funny" or people from the sticks who have seen real-live cows. Also no "easy" women spotted, but it was a Wednesday night and they could have been simply out on the game.
Entertainment: 8/10. Positives: Fri, Sat and Sun they have live bands till late. On Sat they have an 'upstairs' disco which is open until 3am! And its upstairs! What's that all about? Also noted was some kind of "members only" backroom for private affairs. Need to find out about this. Also show footie, but mainly only London teams, so no Conference games. Bah!
Negatives: Conference games unlikely to be shown on TV. No karaoke night that I know of.
Location: 8/10. Positives: Lots of 'after' bars in the area. Negatives: Decent kebab shop at least 15 minutes walk away.
Overall: 8/10.
Summary: Very good potential to be the 'local'. We could be onto a winner.