O’Neill’s in Wardour Street

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“DO I not like that.”

It’s the quote that the late Graham Taylor was to be forever saddled with after a documentary charting his disastrous time as the England football manager mic’d him up on the touchline.

We watched as he watched the national side lose to the Netherlands in 1993, a result which meant we failed to qualify for the glitzy World Cup the following year in the United States.

Taylor could be heard rabbiting on in his Scunthorpe tones about his misfortune as a Dutch player escaped a glaring red card and stayed on the pitch to score a crucial goal. Do I not like that, do I not like that…

But do you know what Harrington not that likes? The O’Neill’s bar in Wardour Street introducing price-surging for its pints – and maybe there’s a link.

In the latest public declaration that people should definitely not go to Soho on a Saturday night, the cost of a single pint of beer at the bar will now suddenly jump to £9.40 when the clock strikes 10pm.

I would struggle to justify paying these witching-hour prices even if it was at a treasured local pub struggling for survival and I wanted to help the landlord out. We’re all broke.

But remember this isn’t some cosy family-run boozer where everybody knows your name.

It’s an O’Neill’s, famously branded as an “Irish themed bar” at birth, a remnant of the cartoonish 1990s where ordering stout rather than an alcopop was a way to show you were sophisticated. Maybe you’d seen someone drinking it on TFI Friday and it wasn’t just for old guys with beards after all.

Of course, anybody who really wants a decent pour will know exactly where all the good Irish pubs are in London, and none of them ever felt the need to dress every corner in green tinsel and shamrocks.

Now, bear with me, it’s just a theory, but this is where we have to really understand the unseen costs of the afore­mentioned Taylor’s footballing failure.

For while England fans had an unusual summer not involved in a major tournament, the Republic of Ireland had qualified and enjoyed jetting off for a spectacle which was to start with Diana Ross missing a penalty and end with Roberto Baggio doing the same.

Suddenly, everybody found an Irish relative they hadn’t mentioned before, swore allegiance to The Pogues and, yes, insisted that they had always preferred their beer black rather than amber.

So Turnip Taylor, as the bullies unforgivably called him, is therefore an obvious but never spoken about causal connection for the rise of O’Neill’s and its leading role in the creation of Irish “themed” bars in the mid-1990s. Who can truly say whether the concept would ever even have existed, if Taylor hadn’t insisted on picking Carlton Palmer?

As it was, half of London enlisted to the green army of Irish fans and the market was set, and money was to be made hitherto parodying nights out in Dublin.

At one stage, the Bass brewery – which had happily gone about its business since the 1770s without such gimmicks – was opening a new branch every week.

By 1996 there were 250 of them. With such an empire, you might well wonder who the O’Neill in O’Neill’s was?

Nobody in particular, just the most Irish name a company based in Burton could come up with when they thought about how their new brand would look in the now Ireland-loving England.

Maybe it was after old Joe O’Neill who used to run a fish shop in Kilburn, or Paddy O’Neill, the fiddle player down by the station.

Your own prejudices will determine what this old dog O’Neill, the brewmaster, looks like if you close your eyes and try to imagine how authentically Irish his “Irish themed” pubs ares.

Anyway, a good rule of thumb has been in place for many years now, that anything which advertises itself as a something-themed thing will automatically be awful. Please come to our Abba-themed party. No!

Star Wars-themed bingo, a Friends-themed pub quiz night, mark these words, it’s all going to be shit.

But in the 1990s, an American-themed diner selling proper milkshakes or a French-themed patisserie with exotic offerings like a croque madame always seemed exciting and bewitched us into being customers.

In fact, after an influx of soaps from Down Under on our screens, they even came with the Australian-themed Walkabout bars, tricking thousands into parting with real money to order glasses of Castlemaine XXXX.

And so it was with the Irish themed bars mushrooming too, as Irish as you could apparently get without leaving England.

The portfolio of pubs changed hands a few times over the years and O’Neill’s is now owned by Mitchells & Butlers. Many have closed including the large one which once operated out of a former church up in Muswell Hill.

There are still 49 running, although the everyday can be St Patrick’s Day vibe has changed to clean tiles and high chairs, and a drive on the food. These include Wardour Street and its jumping price list.

Buying a pint in London’s pubs is already a deep breathy moment. With exact prices rarely known before you order, it’s a dive into the unknown as you wait for some magical figure to come back. That’ll be___ insert number here ___.

But while inflation may make it seem normal one day, £9.40 for a pint in an O’Neill’s –or anywhere, for that matter – at this current time is surely too much. Rachel Reeves and her penny off a pint will hardly soften the surcharge.

We can all sympathise with our city’s great pubs feeling they have to raise the prices to win a comeback from the Covid and the cost-of-living double whammy.

But O’Neill’s structure seems deliberately set for tipsy blokes worried that Jasmine might go home if they don’t order another, or tourists who believe they are somehow getting an authentic Irish pint eight hours from Dublin.

Either way, that’s not a London for Londoners, and no wonder that you rarely find a 20-something telling you they are heading to Soho for a night out any more.