Royally Shafted.

I feel sorry for these two young people. A wedding day should be the happiest day of your life but how can it be when it's clear you're being forced into doing something that you just don't want to do. Oh, they'll go along with it because it's expected of them but they can't be happy. No one would be happy in their position. It might be every hopeless romantic's dream to get married in Westminster Abbey but that's how it should remain: a dream. The reality for Kate and Wills today is a nightmare turned real like a bad dream made of actual stuff. After the wedding everyone always goes to the pub just before the reception. They'll have to buy everyone a drink. Have you seen central London pub prices these days? It's a MINIMUM of £4 a pint practically wherever you go and when you get married and everyone has made the effort to turn up and buy you a present and said how lovely you look then YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF IT. Your highnesses, it's your round.

This has been bugging me for the last few weeks. And it's not just central London, this £4 a pint evil is creeping everywhere. The thing is, people are acting like nothing has happened. Like it's perfectly normal to charge over £4 for a pint of lager. You see people in pubs everywhere smiling and laughing and chatting and behaving like they haven't just been raped which they most certainly have been. Do you know how much it costs to make a pint of lager? 7p. EVERYTHING costs 7p to make, Beer, Bounty bars, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that I'm finding it impossible to enjoy a pint when I've just £4 and NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE! Is everyone rich now? I could buy Viva La Vida by Coldplay on iTunes for less than the price of a pint and, yes, I know that's a terrible example but I'm all angry and can't think straight. I mean, are we just going to sit there and accept this? We are. We are, of course, we are. I'm too weak to say no. If I don't drink beer then every single thing in the entire world is Viva La Vida by Coldplay.

Oh, I'll buy my neccessary beer but I'm not going to enjoy it. I'll sit there in the pub looking at the smiling damned all around me blissfully ignorant of the fact that they'll wake up the next morning and look in their wallets and say "Fuck. How much did I spend last night? I only had a few pints. I can't have spent that much. I must have been mugged". YOU WERE MUGGED, YOU DICK. Don't you remember? You went into the bar last night and queued up for 15 minutes waiting on your mugger to stop ignoring you. Do you remember? Yeah? Do you remember when your mugger actually mugged someone else before you even though you had been stood there a good 12 minutes before this latest victim turned up? Do you remember when you mugger turned to you with eyes of steel and viciously said "What can I get you?" You said two pints of lager but somehow your mugger managed to get nearly a tenner out of your wallet and you said nothing because it was such a shock you realised you were lucky to get away with your life and there's no way that you're going to say anything about getting salted crisps instead of the salted nuts you asked for. If you haven't the will to stand up to your mugger over a £4 pint then you're just going to have to admit you have no nuts.

The multi-million dollar film Iron Man is currently on sale at Play.com for £3.89. Keep that in mind when next drinking your £4 pint. A film that cost MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to make costs less than your drink that is 97% water. At the same website you can buy David Bowie's Hunky Dory, one of the greatest albums ever made. Of course, you could give £4 to Oxfam. They're always giving fresh water to some village or other for about £4 a month. It would make you feel good. Or you could sponsor a child in an 8 mile sponsored walk. Forcing a child to walk a mile for 50p is as good a bargain as I can think of. Or you could go to a Samuel Smith's pub and get upset for cheaper. Your mind will break after the spiralling thought of "It only costs £2.30 for a pint here. They make it themselves. Why is it so cheap and everywhere else is so expensive? How can they afford to serve beer for 2/3 of an Iron Man DVD but the others can't? Why does my leg hurt? Why can't I kiss men in here?" I love Samuel Smith's pubs and The John Snow kiss embarrassment was a nightmare for me. I'd stand up for the right of any gay couple to kiss in public but if Samuel Smith's pubs closed down due to that furore I was ready to murder John Barrowman himself. Hmmm...I might have been ready to do that before The John Snow kiss embarrassment.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of a public outcry. I mean, it's Britain, for fuck's sake. We love a drink. There's a recession on. How can we drink away our money problems if we can't afford to? And non-Londoners can wipe that smug look off their faces too. There are LOADS of bars in Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham, Newcastle and Liverp...well, not Liverpool, that are just as expensive as London. This is supposed to be a great day that makes Britain proud. A happy, glorious day for all of us. But getting married in the centre of London where it's completely normal to pay OVER £4 a pint? I don't know how the royals can afford it.

Oh. Oh, yeah.

www.michaellegge.info

ps. We have a BRILLIANT line up at the next Los Quattros Cvnts on Wednesday the 4th of May at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square (where it's less than £4 a pint but it's still central London). Our special guests are CHRIS ADDISON and CATIE WILKINS. It'll be a great night and, as usual, get there early to secure a seat. Doors 7.30 pm, show starts 8pm. Admission is £8 or £6 with the secret password which I will publicly tell you is "Mrs. Brown's BAFTA".

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