Hugh Sherwood and John Bridge on the World Cup Spending Spree

Hugh Sherwood from Charters Bar and John Bridge from Peterborough Chamber of Commerce keep their chins up despite England’s exit from the World Cup and a probable end to the boost in business that came with it. Broadcast at 08:10 on Monday 28th June 2010 in the Peterborough Breakfast Show hosted by Paul Stainton on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

PAUL: The dream has ended, a mixture of humiliation and controversy, thrashed four one by the Germans. The turning point may have been Frank Lampard’s goal, although we could have been six down by then. It did go over the line by about sixteen feet but the referee didn’t see it, or the linesman. Third week in a row though that there’s been an England World Cup game on and the third weekend in a row that pubs in Peterborough have been absilutely jam-packed. The Sports Lounge on King Street had another eight hundred fans watching their big screen, and selling over three thousand pints. And here is what the fans at Charters and the Botolph Arms thought of it. (TAPE) (OB)
FANS:
It was disappointing, but four years time maybe they’ll be better next time. There’s always that hope. Slightly disappinting hope that you know it won’t come true ever.
Very disappointing, but it’s what I expected to happen. I didn’t expect us to lose so badly but it was what I expected. We’ve not performed in the whole tournament. It’s exactly what was going to happen.
I think FIFA should change the rules so that at half-time, when they look at the consoles and see that it was definitely over the line, they can say, stupid linesman, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and we’re going to give them the goal. There you go. (STUDIO) (LIVE)
PAUL: Well that’s what the fans thought. Let’s find out what the pubs thought. Hugh Sherwood is from Charters. Morning Hugh
HUGH: Morning Paul.
PAUL: Are you sad that England have gone out from a business point of view?
HUGH: Well definitely from a business point of view. A little bit personally as well. The games that we’ve had from England so far have been absolutely jam-packed, every one of them, and all credit to the football fans that have come out. We’ve had a nice civilised time on every match so far.
PAUL: Obviously business is difficult at the moment. This is a great boost for your takings.
HUGH: Absolutely. We’ve been screening not only the England matches, but we’ve been screening and will continue to screen all of the matches. But certainly the England matches at weekends have been an opportunity for all crowds to come in and really spend some money on booze, really.
PAUL: How big a boost has it been for you?
HUGH: Massive. The only thing that we can compare it to is live music events, but I think it has even ran them pretty closely so yes, definitely well worth doing. We’ve never shown sporting events before and it’s something that we’ll certainly be doing again, looking at Wimbledon, future FA Cups, Premier League and of course the Olympics in twenty twelve.
PAUL: And how many pints did you sell at the weekend?
HUGH: I couldn’t give you an exact estimate but I can tell you we sold way over twenty two hundred gallons.
PAUL: Twenty two hundred gallons!
HUGH: Yes. So in pints that’s an obscene amount.
PAUL: Yes. Times eight, isn’t it? It’s about seventeen thousand pints I believe. That’s not bad at all.
HUGH: Take into account we’ve had some hot weather on Friday and Saturday as well, so that’s helped us.
PAUL: So bring back the World Cup, what, every month?
HUGH: If only. If only. Yes.
PAUL: (LAUGHS) What a great weekend. Hugh, thank you for that. John Bridge is the Chief Executive of the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce. Morning John.
JOHN: Yes good morning Paul.
PAUL: So a good World Cup could bring a lot of money into the local economy, can’t it?
JOHN: Oh it does indeed. And it’s a great shame that regretfully England have gone out earlier than we would have hoped. Because clearly although people are keen on watching other teams, it is the England matches that really bring the people out in force, and obviously helps the local economy tremendously, because it’s been really good, the innovative way that all the pubs and establishments have obviously made arrangements for these matches to be seen, and they’ve really got the customers there. And there’s something wonderful about watching the match together with lots of other people. It really raises people’s spirits. So it’s a great great disappointment to everybody that England have not been able to achieve more than they have this year.
PAUL: I suppose the other side of the coin, though, is the number of sickies that it involves. I should think that there are a few people off this morning with “illnesses”.
JOHN: Yes I think it’s the difficulty is of course that when you win you have a bottle of champagne, and when you lose you have a bottle of Scotch, and that obviously impacts on you more in terms of the alcohol. But nevertheless Paul the key thing is that what we do find is that a feeling of well-being has disappeared. People feel deflated, and so …
PAUL: I’m trying my best John. I’m trying my best to lift them.
JOHN: Yes. And the difficulty is as you know that impacts and affects people when they get into work, and they don’t .. you know .. productivity reduces because they don’t feel the way they should. It’s a great disappointment. If England had won everybody would be jumping around feeling full of the joys of Spring and actually everything would be so much more positive and better.
PAUL: You should see the people behind the scenes here John. It’s been very difficult getting them to do any work this morning.
JOHN: I thought that you told me that was like it on many occasions Paul.
PAUL: Yes it is.
JOHN: But nevertheless I can see, and I understand. I know my own feelings, totally dejected I felt yesterday. It was just you just couldn’t believe that they could play so badly. There’s no excuses. There’s lots of talk about different things and whether the goal was a goal. We all know it was a goal, but that didn’t really make a difference. There was no passion in it. They just didn’t seem to actually be enjoying and wanting to be there, and they didn’t show any indication that they actually wanted to win.
PAUL: So we’ve had a bit of a boost for the local economy then. Do you think now there’ll be a bit of deflation for the local economy?
JOHN: Well I think so. I think the key thing is what we’ve all got to do now is try and get everybody to support the teams that are going through to the final rounds, and what we need to do is all get together and celebrate the successes of the teams that are doing so well.
PAUL: We need some felt-tips John, to colour in the flags a different colour. That’s what we need.
JOHN: You’re probably right there. And I have noticed even this morning driving around that I haven’t actually seen one, and yet on all the other days they’ve been around on many vehicles, and I haven’t seen one outside of a house at all either, so people clearly have got their tails between their legs and pulled all their flags down because they feel so dejected about what has happened.
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