News, nuggets and longreads 22 August 2026: Tales from the Folly

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got bottle shops, pickle beer and cocktail lounges. First, some news: the Wetherspoon pub chain has decided enough is enough and banned customers from using the loudspeaker mode on their phones. If, like us, you find the scratchy squawking of TikTok videos or calls to the proctologist playing out loud in the pub intolerable you might think, well, it’s about time someone made a stand. Commenters online have questioned the assertion that Wetherspoon pubs are “an oasis of tranquillity and contemplation” as Tim Martin has claimed but, honestly, we’ll take a bit of boisterous behaviour over phone speaker noise anyway. The next question is, how do you enforce it? You’re asking bar staff to have difficult conversations with people who might well turn nasty when challenged. A perennial problem for pubs in re: all sort of behavioural issues, we suppose. Also, it strikes us as interesting that Tim Martin…