Pie beats Sky at pulling profits

Not so long ago, a Sky Sports TV screen in a pub was a licence to print money. Now it’s beginning to look like an own goal. Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries has removed Sky Sports from 100 of its 2,352 pubs - and profits are up.

Is anyone really surprised? The plain fact is that not everyone wants to share a pub with a crowd of football fans.

So full marks to Wolverhampton and Dudley for extending its big-screen ban to more pubs across the Black Country.

While there will always be a place for some Sky Sports pubs, it is high time that most pubs were reclaimed for their original purpose as places of relaxation.

Football takes over a pub in a way that no other entertainment can. Darts, dominoes and even a fruit machine do not dominate to the same extent. Sky Sports screens turn pubs into mini-cinemas. Outsiders feel intimidated. Families would never dream of dropping in for a meal in a pub showing a big match.

The economic arguments are against TV, too. Sky Sports is a huge outlay for pubs. And, while football fans may quaff their share of beer or lager, if trouble erupts, any profits can vanish in an orgy of wrecking.

In any case, profits on alcohol have always been marginal compared to the big money to be made on serving meals.

Why go to all the expense and potential trouble of filling a pub with football fans when half-a-dozen dining tables can generate more money?

And from next year, when the national smoking ban comes into effect, who could even guarantee a good turn-out of the fans?

So it’s out with soccer, in with suppers. Pubs will become quieter, friendlier, cleaner and, all being well, more profitable.

Funny how things turn out. After all Mr Murdoch’s hype, the future for our pubs may lie not with Sky but with pie.

Harsh lesson for gullible students

A FOOL and his money are soon parted. The young students fleeced of £190 each in a computer scam may not be fools but they are certainly very naive.

It was a new twist on an old racket. Punters were led to believe that boxes offered outside the University of Wolverhampton contained laptop computers at a knock-down price.

After parting with their money, students found to their horror that the contents were bricks or potatoes.

It is a hard, hard lesson. And yet these students have learned something valuable which seems to have been overlooked in their education so far - if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

All the degrees and doctorates in the ivory towers of academe are no substitute for a practical lesson at the University of Hard Knocks.