There’s this pub in my town called the Opera House. The establishment is so named because, yes, you’ve guessed correctly, it used to be an actual opera house many years ago. As local legend has it, the use of the building as a theatrical establishment was limited to a mere few performances back in the early years of the 20th century, after which it was unceremoniously turned into various incarnations of community hall, scout hut, bingo hall, and for sometimes lengthy periods, vacant space.

Around ten years ago, the theatre was leased by JD Wetherspoon, a huge company here in the UK that owns a great number of pubs spanning the nation. The company has successfully pioneered the concept of the “bargain pub”, and clearly wanted to bring this great British tradition to our good town. Essentially, the bargain pub sells drinks at about half the price of normal establishments. The reason they are able to do this is because Wetherspoon is a huge business with enormous bulk buying power, and can cut the kind of deals with brewers and distributors that are simply out of reach for the average publican. The Wetherspoon business strategy is this: make up lost revenue on drink prices with sheer number sold. It’s a solid concept that has served the company well for many years. And to this end, all pubs owned by the company are above average in size and able to accommodate a staggering number of people when packed to capacity. The Opera House is no exception. The choice of a small theatre as the venue for a mass drinking trough is inspired, if indeed your goal is to water down as many people as possible at any given time.

As you might imagine, because of the low price, the Opera House attracts a lot of people from two specific demographics: low-incomers and teenagers. The teenagers generally confine their patronage to the weekends, at which time they descend on the place in such numbers that a queue forms outside and a bouncer must be employed to guard the door. On these nights it would probably not be hideously inaccurate to estimate numbers in excess of 500 thirsty teenagers, awash with hormones and floating high on the clouds of possibility, amongst other things. During the week though, the teenagers petty much leave the place to everyone else, and the pub is rarely crowded.

So on a week night I occasionally find myself strolling in there for a drink, usually bereft of companionship. It’s a sad fact that the old OH is not terribly popular within my circle of friends, being deemed too downmarket for their tastes. What a shame. I go there for several reasons. First, it must be stated that, depending on cashflow, I sometimes fall into that low income bracket mentioned earlier, and should ideally not be drinking anywhere BUT the Opera House, were I able to curb that lust for adventure that leads me to other more expensive establishments, despite the confines of my wallet. But I also like the clientele of the place, which seems to be a mixture of the most ordinary people and the most extreme eccentrics in town. But mostly I like to go there to soak up the atmosphere. And the nature of this atmosphere is that the Opera House is STILL a theatre. Not a working theatre, mind you, but one where all the trappings, except for the seating in the stalls, still remain from the venue’s heyday in the 1920s. We’re talking gold filigree, carved cherubs, original stage with elaborately carved proscenium, four ornate alcoves of box seating, huge chandeliers and two balconies with original seats remaining (these and the boxes are off limits unfortunately). And all of this in pretty damn good shape, considering it hasn’t been used for its original purpose in over 80 years. There are two bars, one at the back of where the stalls would have been and one on the stage itself. Overall it’s a pretty bizarre setting for a drinking establishment, and that’s exactly why I like it.

There is also the fact that almost every time I’m in the place, something weird happens. Like the time a guy dropped his trousers in the middle of the room and started having a wank right there in the middle of the pub, in front of about 30 people. The poor bastard was wasted on more than just beer, and he wouldn’t stop until some woman emptied a pint of lager over his head. Or there was the time a guy was unhappy with the football score and tossed his phone into the TV screen causing it to explode and shower glass over a young couple who were literally just in the process of getting engaged. Fortunately no one was hurt, but he poor groom-to-be wanted to kill the phone-tosser for ruining his proposal. Somehow a fight was prevented, but I don’t remember how. Yep, if there’s one thing the old OH has in abundance, it’s character.

So I’m in there the other night and I catch a conversation between two thirty-something blokes about how Facebook is going to beat Twitter at its own game. Now apart from the strangeness of hearing this particular subject discussed in a setting where conversation doesn’t usually move beyond sports and getting laid, it just happens to be one of the most ridiculous suggestions ever uttered by human lips. So, throwing caution to the wind, I leapt out of my seat and launched myself toward the bar where the two gentlemen stood. Within moments I had set them straight, telling them that Facebook and Twitter were two different types of app for two different types of people. Facebook is a massive suite of functionality that demands that the user enter its world and invest time to get the most out of it. Twitter does one simple thing only, sits on the sideline, fits into YOUR world and demands next to nothing of you. People who are looking ways to occupy time use Facebook. People who don’t have time use Twitter. Adding Twitter type functionality to Facebook is simply adding one more piece to an already large puzzle. It may appeal to those who are already there and would be there anyway, but it’s never going to bring anyone in who would otherwise be using Twitter. There will always be a market for those who need something incredibly simple and undemanding because they simply don’t have the bandwidth for anything more complicated. That’s me, by the way, in case you didn’t remember from past podcasts. If you doubt the validity of my hypothesis, ask yourself this question: How many CEOs actively use Facebook as opposed to Twitter? I think you’ll find the number stacked highly in Twitter’s favour. And if you want to know why, re-read this paragraph. (By the way, the kind of rathole I’ve just gone down is a feature of the new format of the show. Hope you like it. Now back to the pub.)

Fortunately the two gents at the bar turned out to be decent sorts, so rather than head-butting me and then cutting my throat with a broken bottle for weaseling into their conversation, they ended up buying me a drink. And over the course of the rest of the evening, several more. Strangely enough the three of us hit it off pretty well. Rex Whitehead is a web developer like me, so we had that shit in common. He’s also a fan of the “ladies of pop” like me, and claims to have attended Kylie’s “Body Language” album launch show at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2004. I wasn’t sure whether I believed him or not, but I was still jealous. He also claims to have killed his parents when he was five years old. I let that one pass by and filed it for analysis later. Griffin Krebb, on the other hand, is a fellow American and claims to have won the lottery somewhere in the US last year. He also claims to have been in space. Yep, that’s right. Space. At first I thought the dude was joking about both the lottery and space, but he kept mentioning them and looking rather serious when he did so. Rex didn’t flinch at any of this, and after about four pints I started to believe that Griffin was seriously mentally disturbed, and possibly Rex as well. I liked them both very much. At the end of the evening we vowed to meet again soon, and did.

So, if you have cleverly surmised that the point of this episode of So Sue Me is to introduce you to both a location and some people that will be featuring in future shows, you are correct. After all, you know that I do this sort of thing, and I’ve already told you that the show is moving in a new direction. I hope you’re ready