Up for sale: the Penderel’s Oak

NO need to spend too much time analysing the works of Lee Anderson.

The former Labour councillor now serving as a Conservative MP in Nottinghamshire won the prize for the most oafish contribution to his party’s conference in Birmingham this week when he questioned how bad food poverty in this country could really be when so many people are considered obese.

Because, you know, the cheapest meals are so often the finest and freshest.

It’s reported he went on to tell a fringe event that there would only be a problem with the economy in this country when “Wetherspoon’s is empty”.

It was a slightly ironic way to gauge the health of a cash-strapped nation, given JD Wetherspoon had just announced the planned sales of at least 20 pubs last week.

The list includes, sadly, the Penderel’s Oak in High Holborn, a pub, you will all be well versed, named after the tree in Stafford where Charles II apparently hid from the roundheads during the Civil War.

Note to Lee: When I checked in on Tuesday evening, it was indeed packed, but something isn’t adding up with his economic meters as a Wetherspoon’s spokes­person said last week: “This is a commercial decision. We understand that customers and staff will be disappointed with it. The pubs will continue to operate as Wetherspoon outlets until they are sold.”

Bookcases in the Penderel’s Oak

As much as I like many of the cosier pubs off High Holborn – and you don’t have go too far down the road to uncover some real journalist hideouts – Harrington has a sweet affection for the Oak.

As I ordered the cheapest pint I’ll drink all month, I could not help wonder what will happen to the library of books stacked up as decoration next to the seating. There are hundreds of them – an attempt possibly to make the lawyers from the local inns of court feel at home.

And then suddenly my mind flashed back 15 years to a forgotten memory of how I was in there with a group of friends.

At random we had taken a book from the shelf and in the back cover written down what one of our pals would try to do before he was 30.

A stand-up comedy gig, a jump out of a plane… that kind of thing. We vowed to return two years later and find the copper-coloured edition of The Iron Duke and see if he had completed the list.

But all of us were a little merry – it was a Wetherspoon’s – and none of us remembered until this week when the news came through that the Oak was for sale.

I scanned the shelves hopefully with no luck.

So if anybody took it from the Penderel’s Oak in High Holborn, please get in touch before the pub closes down or changes hands.

We’d love to be reminded of what was proposed that night.

Maybe my friend and I will do those things before we’re 60.

Whatever our fortune, there is a library of books in that cavern of a bar that deserve a good home.