The Fat Badgers first interest in real ale and good pubs started back in our school days. We can be honest about the fact we were served beer in a pub whilst we were still at school as the Wheel Pub in Codsall, Staffordshire has long since been demolished and turned into houses. It wasn’t exactly the real ale we know and love today, we were weaned on Banks’s Mild - always been slightly different to traditional ales. Banks’s Mild was known as quite a ‘bitter’ mild, so appealed to Mild and Bitter drinkers alike. It was said that Banks’s sold four pints of Mild to every pint of Banks’s Bitter. Every other brewer sells more Bitter. Banks’s is however brewed slightly different to most ales and use a different finings to most other brewers. Finings are used at the end of the brewing process to make the ale clearer. It also meant that Banks’s beers were one of those that had a thick creamy head on top of the beer. The state of beers and pubs at the time wasn’t very good. When we found our first pub that served ales straight from the cask, we were blown away by the difference and immediately became lovers of ‘flat’ beer. Traditionalists and connoisseurs will tell you that both ale and wine should be served at room temperature but when was this first mentioned? Were room temperatures lower when the phrase was first uttered? What we do know is that we prefer a flat, warm beer over a cold fizzy one. So, we’d tried a beer in the Wheel and then tried real ale from the Fox at Marston (sadly now a house) and paid a visit to the Bull & Bladder (properly called the Vine), the brewery in Brierley Hill that still today brews probably the best bitter in the world - Bathams and almost as good, Simpkiss of Quarry Bank sadly sold to Greenall Whitley in 1985. We decided we wanted to try more!

1981

Andy Keeling & Ian Reynolds both starting working in the field of Architecture. Andy worked for an Architect’s practice that specialised in the design of pubs & hotels and extensions to both. He worked on hundreds of designs mostly for Bass and Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries including some in interesting locations such as the new pub and canal marina for the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival and also a whole new village called Craobh Haven on the west coast of Scotland which included a pub now called The Lord Of The Isles. Ian moved into the architectural side of Agriculture working on Farms, Golf Courses and animal breeding facilities. They have sailed and skied together and have even tried skydiving but there’s no truth to the rumour that they only do things beginning with the letter ‘S’ although they have also played skittles, snooker and six a side football together.

1984

Fat Badger Kilo & Fat Badger Reno started keeping a list of inns visited and rated them on the standard of what we found beyond the front door. Not quite to the level of the Good Beer Guide and our categories of what we considered made a good pub, maybe not the same as we would today and perhaps not now considered PC but we rated the pubs on: • Women • Beer • Atmosphere • Staff Attitude • Comfort Our first entry in the guide on the 23/10/1984 was the Seven Stars at Seisdon which sadly is now a house. It achieved 69% likeability with the roaring log fire, fantastic friendliness of the staff and well kept Ind Coope Burton Ale getting the majority of the score - an all round decent pub. Still a decent score as the best pub in the guide ended up being the Whittington Inn which scored 79% and still appears in our guide as an inn worth visiting. Guided tours of Wolverhampton & Dudley Brewery, Batham’s Brewery, Bass Brewery and Hook Norton Brewery followed along with guided tours of Astley Vineyard and Halfpenny Green Vineyard.

1985

Amazingly the lowest scoring inn with a tiny 6% was the Hundred House Hotel which is now in our guide as Highly Recommended, something has obviously changed substantially over the years. Our first visit on the 12/01/1985 may have been before Henry Philips purchased the Hundred House and turned it into something special. Their first Good Beer Guide was purchased and became a very well thumbed book.

1986

On 19th November Fat Badger Kilo took part in the Beaujolais Run in an Audi Quattro in which they became the only car plus one motorbike to make it back early enough to catch the first ferry back to Blighty.

1988

In September Fat Badger Kilo went skiing and drinking with the legend, Franz Klammer. They were introduced to a skiing Badger named Boris in a bar in Austria.

1990

In February Fat Badger Kilo bought a new house and in September became Bar Manager of his local pub and friends with a brewery owner in Stourbridge.

1998

In February Fat Badger Kilo decided he was well enough qualified to go out drinking with another legend, George Best. Although not very much was remembered the following day, one discussion about pubs and this new invention called ‘the internet’ prompted Kilo to register his first domain name to put his and Reno’s pub recommendations online.

1999

Kilo contacted a publican who ran an exceptionally well run establishment to inform him that his inn had been added to the guide and they decided to meet up to discuss further. The domain name www.qualityinns.co.uk was purchased to house the site and the two became good friends and discussed long into the early hours about food, beer and other stuff. As this particular publican already had plaques attached to his pub from Egon Ronay and Les Routiers, along with CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide stickers on the windows, he liked the idea of adding more notices of good quality. As he owned a motorcycle with side car, it was mentioned that they could drive around the country ‘Badging’ inns and adding them to the site. We’d be like the Two Fat Ladies said one, except we’d be the Two Fat Bastards “or…..” said Kilo

“Two Fat Badgers”

How we all laughed! Idea had been planted and Fat Badger Kilo noted that he knew of a guy called Gary Thorley who designed ‘Pottermus’ - Stoke City’s mascot. Gary was a very talented amateur cartoonist who worked for Michelin tyres for a living - A Michelin plaque was one badge that our publican was not in possession of. Fat Badger Kilo met up with Gary and they did a mini pub crawl around the Stoke on Trent area checking out Gary’s favourite establishments. Gary then produced the first of many cartoon badgers for the site.

2000

Once we’d realised that all the planes hadn’t fallen out of the sky, the clocks hadn’t stopped and the internet was still alive we went about recruiting Badgers from Setts around the UK to start sniffing out all the best pubs & inns to add to the guide and registered the domain: www.fatbadgers.co.uk The Two Fat Badgers visited the N.E.C. for a publican’s trade exhibition where they found a fantastic pottery company based in Burton-on-Trent who made all sorts of Guinness pottery along with various ‘badges’ for breweries. A number of really nice quality plaques were made for establishments that were happy to join a buying group where they could get all things pub related along with heavily discounted web design. We found that many publicans didn’t want to pay anything and one in Devon even stole a plaque so we dropped the idea after the first year. The publican purchased a second pub and Fat Badger Kilo got busy with building websites and then joined an oak framing company as an architect, designing oak frame buildings. The Fat Badgers site was then run ‘on the side’ with Fat Badger Kilo fitting in as many ‘inspection visits as was badgerly possible.

2022

Fat Badger Kilo set up his own Oak framing company www.albionoak.co.uk, having worked in the industry for many years working with many of the big national oak frame companies and having won awards for his designs. This gave him a bit more time to visit the pub but with very few of the other Fat Badgers living close by and some still having to answer to a boss he wasn’t so keen to go alone, so along came Freddie - a great excuse to visit a few more delightful English country inns and some dodgy boozers as well. This has seen an increase in site inspections along with a few inns removed for various reasons but mostly because they are no longer inns - a sad state especially when the good one’s fall along the way. It has also seen the addition of a dog friendly map on the site - We’ve always listed when we know dogs are welcome in establishments but this has been expanded to include other dog friendly places such as beaches and the Google Page can be saved on your phone so that you always have access to friendly places. We are now looking forward to Fat Badger Reno retiring in 2025 so we can put the band back together and have a few trips out ‘Badging’ the best pubs we can find