'Pub-goers across the Midlands forming orderly queues at the bar? We must stop this alarming trend now'

And yes, there it was, an orderly line of people, snaking back from the bar in a city centre pub, practically to the door.

Now, I admit that I’m more easily irritated than most. I can get very Larry David about the little things.

But I’m sorry, this isn’t some minor quibble over etiquette – a bugbear of the grouchy man. This isn’t something I’m willing to learn to live with. This is an alarming trend we can’t let get out of hand. 

In my book waiting to get served in a pub or a bar means spreading out along the bar, shoulder to shoulder. It’s a time-honoured British tradition. Part of pub culture. It works absolutely fine, thanks.

So what’s going on? Is it just me being Nottingham’s answer to Larry David? Am I the only one?

Well, actually, no I’m not. As it turns out there are a lot of other people out there getting just as irate over this. 

Some guys have even started a campaign on twitter – a “campaign to end the recent phenomenon of queuing single file in pubs” – sharing photos of particularly evil examples of it.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am. It’s not just me! There are other people out there, seething over this. Phew.

But just to make sure, I thought I’d go and speak to the experts – the bar staff who have to contend with this madness. 

So I set out for a walk around the pubs of Nottingham city centre, asking bar staff to spill the beans.

It didn’t take long to find a fellow anti-queuer. The third place I went into in fact – Barrel Drop,  on Hurts Yard, where Hannah Foxton works behind the bar.

“I’ve seen it in multiple places, multiple big bars across the city. I don’t know why people do it. I think it’s just this British urge to queue. If one person’s stood at the bar, the next person might just stand behind them. 

“But it doesn’t work that way. It’s part of a bar tender’s job to pay attention to who’s come up next, and it’s actually not as hard to do as people think it is. I’ve never once forgotten who’s next when people are standing in a row at the bar.

“I’ve even seen it at festivals. I’ve worked at festivals, I’ve attended festivals and seen it happening. I’ve seen people behind the bar saying ‘Please come round!’. It makes no sense!”

So far so good. I’m not alone. 

It tried maybe 20 pubs in a short walk around town. Maybe two thirds of staff members I spoke to said they’d never seen it happen – but were clear that they wouldn’t like it if it did.

Then I found another member of the anti-queue team, behind the bar at Yarn - part of the Concert Hall and Theatre Royal. They asked not to be named, but confirmed that it is a serious problem on busy nights, especially because at intervals there’s only a very limited window to get drinks.

“It really does my head in,” they said. “You get one queue at one side of the bar, and one queue at the other side. So then you have five staff members trying to cram into one area of the bar rather than people just queueing along the bar.

“It takes up so much of our time. It means they wait longer, and then they complain about waiting longer. There’ll be five of us waiting here while they’re gathered round one area in a long queue.”

“We ask people to move along the bar, but they just ignore you.”

Now that’s worrying. And even more worrying is that, Laurence Clayton, duty manager at Brewdog on Broad Street, says it happens in there “all the time”.

“Especially when it’s busy. Maybe it’s British politeness. People love queueing.”

But surely, I ask him, British people also love British pub etiquette – which means not queueing?

“It happens a lot at Christmas,” he says, “So you get people going out who don’t usually going out. They’re not pub-goers.

“You try to get them to move up to the bar but it doesn’t really work. It slows things down, especially when it’s really busy. You’re trying to get people’s attention but they’re standing behind people in the bar. 

“It’s a massive pain in the arse.”

So much so that Dave Wroe, one of the managers at Junk Yard, has even taken to social media, in a one-man rant-campaign against the trend.

There’s a sign outside a pub in Derby (see below), railing against single-file queues, a message which Dave approves.

One of the comments underneath is from a bar called The Bear in Sheffield: “Happens all the time in The Old Shoe! Strange behaviour!” 

Clearly this shocking behaviour is going on everywhere.

So I asked to speak to Dave at the Junk Yard, and he was very ready to have a vent.

“It’s perplexing” he said. “I don’t get it. It just doesn’t make any sense to me, it never has.

“I could almost get it if it was something that had just come out of covid. But this was happening before Covid. 

“There shouldn’t be a queue. You don’t queue at bars. It’s almost like people don’t want a beer.”

Quite. But we know that’s not the case. So why are people making life miserable for themselves? Is the British love of pubs being overtaken by British self-loathing? 

As Hannah in Barrel Drop put it, “I’ve thought, I guess I’ll stand at this weird queue, but, is this how we’re doing it now?”

Not if I have anything to do with it it’s not.