Opinions: Do you prefer a pub or a wine bar?

Saturday 14 August 1993 23:02 BST
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JEFFREY BERNARD, journalist: I prefer pubs. Wine bars play the bloody Four Seasons in the background all day long and the people who go to them are awful - advertising people, producers of TV commercials. Pubs have a better mix of people and they are for drinking in, not sitting around talking business.

ROLAND DAVIES, advertising copywriter: I used to go to wine bars when I was younger because there seemed to be lot of available women. I'm still not married but now I go to the pub with the guys. It has a sticky floor, and there are dogs everywhere. But it's a damn sight cheaper than a wine bar.

JANE DUNCAN, personal assistant: I never go to pubs, I hate them. They are stale and boring. There's nothing cosy about sitting next to a fruit machine and furnishings that have been there for centuries. It's not the men that put me off pubs - trendies are more scary.

NANCY STEIN, writer: Pubs are really intimidating for women, alien territory. You have to get through a cordon of men at the bar who say things like 'All right love, I'll get you one.' If I'm with a man I ask him to get the drinks and I'd never go to one on my own.

SCREAMING LORD SUTCH, political candidate: I feel more at ease in a pub but, I hate to admit it, I'm going to celebrate my 30 years in politics in a wine bar, in Leicester Square. All the Loonies will be there.

BARBARA WINDSOR, actress: I own a pub. Wine bars don't have any life. They attract poseurs and showy people - not the lovely chit-chatterers you find in pubs.

ARTHUR STOKER, regular pub-goer: It's all changed - now you get women coming up to the bar, not shy at all, ordering themselves drinks and even paying for them. The atmosphere's all gone.

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