I love a Wetherspoons... but its ‘£1.99 a pint’ January sale is depressing and irresponsible

The pub chain’s founder Tim Martin deserves his knighthood – but his latest drinks promotion, where a round for four people will cost less than a tenner, is short-sighted at best, and dangerous at worst, says Ryan Coogan

Wetherspoons is a British institution.

If you’ve ever been a poor student with only a tenner in your pocket and a dream of getting embarrassingly drunk, there’s a good chance Wetherspoons has had your back, at one point or another.

If you’ve ever been hungover and wanted to eat something that would make you feel a little better in the immediate instance, but ultimately make things 10 times worse, Wetherspoons has been there for you. If you’ve ever craved a “cocktail” that’s just one type of spirit mixed together with three different fruit juices, Wetherspoons has you covered in spades.

I may have some political differences with the chain’s founder Tim Martin, but I fully support him receiving that knighthood for all the times he’s helped me break a stalemate with an indecisive friend group with the magic phrase: “F*** it, it’s almost 11 – shall we just do ’Spoons?”

But there’s a fine line between cheeky British pub culture and dangerous irresponsibility, and it’s difficult to tell on which side the pub chain’s latest offer falls.

Wetherspoons has announced that it will be holding a “January sale” starting next week, where it will slash the price of drinks to as low as £1.99 a pint.

It’s the kind of deal that probably sounds great when you’re a student and have recently come to the conclusion that you cannot be killed, but once you broach 30 it just comes across as sad.

There’s something very off-putting about getting a round for me and four friends and getting change back on a £10 note. Spending 20 quid at the bar shouldn’t put you at risk of hospitalisation. At that point, surely you’re just drinking for the sake of drinking?

Despite the huge cultural shifts on matters of public health these past few years, with fewer younger people than ever taking up damaging habits like smoking, it sometimes feels like we’re regressing as a society when it comes to alcohol. If you subscribe to Instagram pages with words like “lad” and “banter” in the name, you might have come across the story of TikTok creator Jon May, who set himself a challenge this year to drink 2,000 pints in 200 days. He achieved his goal all the way back in October, which means that whatever drinking he’s done since then has been purely freelance.

But surely May learned a lesson, right? Or at the very least, has satisfied his ego and no longer feels the need to conduct unethical experiments in his liver for clout? Well, he recently pledged to drink 10 pints a day in 2024, so I guess the jury’s still out.

I thought we were past the point of glorifying booze? Alcohol isn’t cool anymore. Vaping and being sanctimonious on the internet are what’s in nowadays.

Making a big deal out a drinks promotion in 2024 gives me the same sort of cringing anxiety I get when I’m watching a black-and-white movie where everybody’s smoking in every scene. Except at least those guys had the excuse of the government telling them that cigarettes were an essential part of their five-a-day. We know how bad drinking is for us. Why are we tempting people to do it to excess?

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just bitter because long Covid robbed me of my ability to metabolise alcohol properly, and now I can’t drink a glass of wine without feeling like Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride. Maybe I’m just jealous of students who can house six Jägerbombs and somehow manage to turn up to my lecture the following day.

Or maybe it’s because I grew up around heavy drinkers, and watched them slowly degrade in front of me. In working class communities especially, alcohol is still a scourge, particularly among older generations. I’m sure a lot of people will enjoy a promotion like this responsibly, but I’m also well aware of people who definitely won’t.

Drinking is broadly fine as a social activity, but this kind of promotion seems short-sighted at best, and dangerous at worst. It’s wide open to abuse by people who don’t need an excuse to drink five, 10, 15 pints in a row on a normal day – never mind when they won’t have to break the bank to do it.

If you’re going to take Wetherspoons up on its offer this January, just try to do so responsibly. I hear they’re doing cheap food, too. Maybe just get a burger instead.