Great news! In the annual Enjoy England Awards for Excellence yesterday, the traditional English pub took the top prize, joining a roll call of luminaries including The Queen, Paul McCartney and, erm, the Harry Potter films. The award, the organisers explained, was given to pubs "for the integral part they play in the fabric of the English way of life and the opportunity they provide for domestic and international visitors to meet local people and enjoy local food and drink".
Accepting the award, actor Neil Morrissey - landlord of Ye Olde Punch Bowl Inn near Harrogate, said: "Pubs are important. Having restored a pub myself, I really believe they are the heart and soul of communities and the place that should offer the best welcome to visitors."
All well and good, you might think. But in a climate where landlords are struggling to stay in business and pubs are closing at an unprecedented rate (a staggering 57 every month), it strikes me that this award is, at best, badly timed and, at worst, wildly inappropriate.
Are these people not aware that the pub trade is in a state of crisis?
While researching The Rough Pub Guide, I travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles in search of traditional pubs which maintain a spirit and atmosphere unique to these islands.
From Penzance to Penicuik, the story was the same. When pressed, landlords would deliver the same tale of woe: their livelihood is under threat thanks to a pincer movement comprising of Alistair Darling's prohibitive beer taxes (he is, essentially, banned from all Britain's pubs), the smoking ban and the availability of cheap booze in supermarkets.
Of the pubs that close, a third will be suffer the humiliation of being "gastro-ed" - a craze that has come a cropper with the credit crunch - while the rest will be turned into flats or offices or bulldozed altogether. Either way, a little local history vanishes with each final call for last orders.
Those pubs which remain aren't benefitting from the attentions of displaced drinkers either: Britain's remaining publicans are pulling almost a fifth fewer pints than they were three years ago.
So acute is the problem, that for the first time since the Domesday Book was written over a thousand years ago, more than half the villages in the UK are without pubs, which brings to mind Hilare Belloc's assertion: "When you lose your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England." A sobering thought for the week of St George's Day.
Cracking local pubs do, of course, still exist. From the Luppitt Inn in Devon, run by 89-year-old landlady Mary Wright, to The Crown Posada in Newcastle, where the music comes via a well-worn box of vinyl LPs, idiosyncratic locals can still be found if you look hard enough (any recommendations most welcome).
By giving this award, however, Enjoy England are papering over the cracks on a building set for demolition. Any visitor to these shores expecting to encounter booming local pubs staffed by rosy-cheeked landlords are in for a shock. They're more likely to find a "For Sale" sign.
• Paul Moody is the co-author, with Robin Turner, of The Rough Pub Guide: A Celebration Of The Great British Boozer (published by Orion)
