"They didn't know the British way of not showing your money, they would leave their money on pub counters," says Dorothy Kane.
Officials at 10 Downing Street were known to be more worried about a possible victory by Mr. Clarke, a vastly more experienced politician with a bruising debating style and the kind of glad-handing pub-counter personality thought necessary to bring disaffected Tory voters from middle Britain back into the fold.
My mum and I went to the pub for a counter tea on Monday; the covers band tore into a clearly hastily rehearsed but heartfelt Prince set and I cried into my parma.
I finagled a stool at the pub's sturdy wooden counter and, taking a cue from my bar mates, ordered beer-battered fish and chips and a dark, potent stout.
Peter's insistence that the actors mingle with the audience in their denims in the local pub after the show – to counter the aloof, spurious "glamour" of the profession – did not always go down well, but most entered into the Brechtian spirit of the venture.
With its lurid tales of petty crime, sexual deviance and a local pub that sells ecstasy over the counter, Shameless is among the hits of modern British television.
For months, they struck up conversations at the record store counter, on buses, in pubs, about why Oasis were better than Blur.
One idea that is gaining ground is putting post-office counters in pubs, another amenity under threat in many small villages.
In the well air-conditioned pub, a man ordering a beer learns over the counter to ask the woman serving how long she's been out here.
Just up the street is Foxy Browns, Dingle's now legendary hardware-store-cum-pub where pints of Guinness are served across the counter from flange nuts and Endomice "premium mouse killer".
To that end, it seems a good time to offer a variety of glimpses into the country's innards, if only to counter what I have elsewhere called "haute pub-talk" misimpressions.
