You are known for coming up with great ideas in pubs that usually end up on the stage, but this time you have come up with something completely different?
It was actually born out of a need to take a break from the Edinburgh Fringe and touting. Ridiculous really. We've substituted touring the UK in a van for cycling the length of the UK on a tandem. But after 12 consecutive years bouncing around on stage in our underpants, we just felt we should have ago at something different for a year.
Tom Sandham and Ben McFarland have turned their careers as drinks journalists into a successful live comedy duo with their successful stage show all about educating the great British public about the wonderful world of booze
The show sort of looks after itself now and with the following we have we can take a bit of a sabbatical and go back next year. And we had set up our film production company Blind Tiger Films with some friends in Birmingham, and were playing around with formats on our Thinking Drinkers YouTube channel, so thought we would have a real go at that.
But this combined with the genuine frustration with how much pubs have to struggle. A lot of what has underpinned our writing and live shows during the last two decades has been this idea of celebrating and preserving the pub, which we consider an essential third space in our communities.
The Pub Quiz show (which we got a Guinness World Record for no less) was about the pub reminding people to go to the, so was our Pub Crawl show, in fact, every show has had that message.
Most ideas in a pub usually stay there how are you going to make this happen?
The best ideas happened in a pub. Louise Pasteur was wondering why his lunchtime pint was dodgy and it led him to germ theory. The rules of cricket, finessed in a pub. The gunpoweder plot was cooked up in a pub - although that was a bit of a shit idea, or at least shit execution... actually, his execution was pretty effective.
We met our other halves in pubs. We came up with the Thinking Drinkers in a pub. Anyway, point is, great ideas are born in the boozer. And this idea came up in a pub, yes, but it's fair to say, that it's a better idea than a reality, a better idea was one that meant we stayed in a pub and didn't cycle over a thousand miles on a tandem. And how we actually make this happen is a worry. It is a long, long bike ride.
(Here Tom and Ben explain what the Great British Pub Ride is all about in their own inimitable way...)
The pubs, as you would expect provide us with the respite, but in all honesty, we don't know how we are going to make this happen. When the Daily Mirror supported us and This Morning's Ben Shephard said he'd get ITV involved, we suddenly realised we couldn't back out. So, in answer to your question, no idea, it's going to be horrific, and you can laugh at the whole thing on our YouTube channel.
Why do it on a tandem bike and where are you getting the bike from?
Yes. Good question. Right now, we have no f’n idea why we're doing it on a tandem.
Well, that's not true. We pitched our TV show to Channel 4 last year and nearly got a commission, it's called Pour de France and in it we cycle around on our own bikes enjoying the best drinks in France. We realised it wasn't enough jeopardy, what viewers want is some jeopardy, and a tandem is considerably more dangerous and unpleasant. So we figured it would make great TV.
What's interesting, is it would be a lot funnier if it wasn't us on the bike, so it might have been an idea to get two other people to do it.
Tom Sandham and Ben McFarland will only be eating, drinking and sleeping in pubs all the way up their 1,000 mile route
The bike actually came from Tom's mate Dan. Tom was chatting to another mate in a pub of all places and heard he had a tandem and Dan has kindly loaned it to us. The bike has actually done this trip with Dan and his wife before, and they have also been to Bordeaux and back, so it will make it.
Richmond Cycles team has been brilliant as well. They have kindly tuned it up for us so it's safe. Interestingly, Dan got the bike of someone who used to take his blind mate to the pub on the back of it, so it has a really nice back story.
It is all in an amazing cause - can you set out the reasons why you are putting yourself through all this and what you hope to achieve?
So, as said, we love pubs and they are an essential third space for our communities that need preserving. They are a place to have an alcoholic drink, but that's not all they are. These days pubs will host new baby parent coffee morning to yoga classes, work spaces, postal point, cinema rooms, barbers, comedy clubs, fish and chip take aways. They are incredibly diverse business and they are unique.
At a time when high streets are being homogenised with soulless branded food and drink venues, the pub is one of the few places in a town that presents something of the identity of a location. They are a place where most of us have celebrated something. They offer a space for people who are lonely and need company. They have been around for centuries.
You cannot exaggerate the importance of these places in our communities. And yet, the rise of home entertainment and cheap supermarket pricing combined with all the extraordinary red tape, tax and wider costs associated with running these business is making it impossible for many to survive. So we are doing this to remind people they need to use them, or we'll lose them. They need to be reminded why the pub is critical for their community. And we want to get enough noise so that we can put pressure on the wider forces to help alleviate some of the challenges - in essence, try and lower the cost of running the business.
Tom Sandham and Ben McFarland are working with the BBPA to get people behind its Long Live the Local campaign to get more government support for pubs during their epic bike ride
We're working with the BBPA, who will be hoping to drive more people to its campaign, Long Live the Local, which hopes to raise awareness of what is happening to pubs and to get the right support from the government. You can find out more and back the campaign here.
And with support from national press, trade press and hopefully television, combined with the growing subscribers we have on our own YouTube channel, we think we can make that noise.
You are also making the "pub" an integral part of the ride - can you talk us through what you plan to do with pubs along the way?
Yes, completely integral. We can't actually stop at anywhere that isn't a pub. So eating, sleeping, toiletting (apart from wild wees) in a pub. We know we can survive for two weeks, just in pubs. The beauty of the pub is, the customers are such a diverse blend of the community, we know we'll find someone local who can fix a bike, or give us a massage, in the pub.
We have our production crew who will film us there, hopefully with the owner, and we're lining up the pubs on the route, then we'll film in each, release daily dispatches on our YouTube channel. When we've finished there's a break while our editors bring all the footage together and then we'll release a five episode series on our channel, which we'll obviously promote the hell out of.
You can follow Tom and Ben's Great British Pub Ride by subscribing to the The Thinking Drinkers' Youtube channel
We'll stay each night in a pub, and thanks to Stay in A Pub, the team has sorted a number out for us, and thanks to the pubs, many are providing a room for free. So we'll set off every day from that pub, eating a breakfast there. Then we'll aim to reach our first pub of the day by mid morning, move on to the next for lunch, another for a break in the afternoon before reaching the final pub of the day where we'll sleep. Filming in each. (You can follow the pubs that Tom and Ben will be visiting and staying in here.)
How are you choosing the pubs you are going to?
We've had to pick a route that's sensible, it's a well-cycled path and runs from Cornwall up the west side of England and the across central up to Edinburgh and east to John o'Groats. Then we've looked at the pubs on this route and just tried to get a real blend, small free houses, to the brewery pubs, everyone and anyone. Every day we'll be landing in at least one pub that has a great 'side-hustle' going on so we can really showcase how diverse these businesses are.
Can people help raise money - or doing things to support you along the way?
This isn't actually a money raising exercise. It's more a PR project for pubs and we're reaching out to all the local news outlets, as well as the national news and entertainment shows. What we really want people to do is subscribe to our channel and support the content because if we can make enough noise it'll get more people in pubs and help in our efforts to put pressure on the government.
We don't have an overtly political agenda, but anything we can do to try and promote the pub will help protect it. So subscribe to our channel please, and like the content. It's a great time for anyone who wants to create content like this, because a commission from a major channel has always been tough, and it used to be a barrier, now it doesn't matter if they don't go for it, in fact we'll hope to get more views on this through our own channel.
Signing up to https://www.longlivethelocal.pub/ will also help.
How has the training gone - and are you regular bide riders?
Tom and Ben plan will have to cycle up to 100 miles every day for two weeks to reach John o'Groats
We were actually into cycling for a while, but weirdly, neither of us had been on a bike for a year when we decided this was a fun idea. So it's been brutal. I mean, really brutal. We're quite active generally, our motto is Drink Less, Drink Better, and part of this ride is also about bringing in some inspiration for being active. So that's important.
We'll be drinking non-alcohol during the day, and there's loads of options now in pubs. So the wellness, and the mental health awareness is a big part of it. The pub helps people combat loneliness and while drinking isn't great for depression, socialising can be and the pub offers that. Balance it with some exercise and you can feel a lot better about life.
But in terms of training and being ready, nothing can prepare anyone for what we are going to do. One thousand miles is one thing, but doing 70-80 miles a day, back to back, for two weeks, is a real worry and will be incredibly painful. We are stocking up on various bum creams.
Talk us through your choice of lycra and what else you are having to stock up on for the epic journey?
The lycra is an interesting one. Because we are cyclists, we do own enough to wear for this, but we're actually going to try and dial down the lycra because we're not sure it's a great pub look. In fact, we wonder if we might get a bit of a shoeing if we walk into a boozer in that clobber. The shoes are the worst, they clip into the pedals on our own bikes, but walking in them looks absurd.
And all because Tom and Ben love the great British pub...
From a safety point of view, we've opted not to clip into the tandem. Otherwise if one goes, so does the other. There are various other safety concerns, like being hit by trucks, but more worrying is flatulence. If we're eating big breakfasts in the pubs, then beans will no doubt come into play in the late morning, and that could be fatal for whoever is on the back (Ben).
Will you be back on the road again soon with your stage show?
Oh yes, for sure, the aim is to create more for the YouTube channel which has really grown in the first three months of our focus, and then bring in some of the live experiences through that channel as well. It's likely we'll actually use this experience to somehow inform the next live show, perhaps power something with exercise bikes on the stage, although we'll ask a couple of people in the audience to do the cycling.
If people don't know what you do with your live shows how would you describe them in one sentence?
It's a drinks tasting that gets a bit out of control. Or: Drinks-based comedy-theatre entertainment. With partial nudity.
* You can follow Tom and Ben's The Great British Pub Ride by subscribing to their YouTube channel here.
* You can catch up with them on Instagram at @thinkingdrinkers. And the hashtag #mandemontandem
* Find out what they get up to for their day jobs on The Thinking Drinkers website here.
* You can show your support for the BBPA's Long Live The Local campaign here.
