John Paterson, who was chief sub, and David Farrell, a top-table sub, were two old-school South African journalists - fag on the typewriter and pint in the pub at lunch.
When I was a teenager, I went to these things called "poems and pints nights" in the Highland Institute in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow (more pints than poetry).
It has been quite a journey for the son of a market trader who grew up in south-east London and went to Southampton University, where he was nicknamed "Andy" and knocked back pints in the student bar.
It underwent renovations in the 1990s, but happily these extensions have not been at the expense of the character of the pub, and in summer you'll find coast path walkers, fishermen and village cricketers supping pints in the bar, while families enjoy the sun in the beer garden.
No! But in-between queueing and having to go to be inked, I had two pints in the pub and read up on him.
I'm lucky because, all being well, I'll do my usual last-minute shopping dash with my dad on Christmas Eve in Huddersfield and have a couple of pints in the weird pub by the bus station, as we've done for as long as I've been drinking.
I add the warmed malt and hop extract to hot water and mix a total of 40 pints in the fermentation bin, where it is to spend around six days as sugar turns to alcohol.
By the following April, they were headlining two shows at the Electric Ballroom, 150 yards down the road from that first gig, to 1,000 people a night, among them the boys in rugby shirts who throw their pints in the air and the teenagers who decide you are Their Band, and whose patronage turns a band from a cult to a sensation.
But the notion of players with a trumpet in one hand and a pint in the other is largely unfounded.
After a bracing walk, grab a paper and a pint in the bar where the fire roars.
