A MAN walks into a pub. His friend at the bar says: “Are you having one?”

The man replies: “No, it’s the way I’m standing!”

Now, before you think I’m about to get silly, let me say right away that there’s a serious purpose to this week’s wordy wander.

It is to highlight that the price of beer has become unacceptably unaffordable.

The cost of a decent slurp has risen to such heady heights, to be asked in a pub if you’re ‘having one’ has become a rare event.

Indeed, actually going into a pub is an uncommon enough occurrence for many people these days, Tunners included.

Which is a shame, because I like pubs.

Not as much as I used to, mind. As a young man I used to frequent them rather more than was good for me - every night, in fact.

But that was in the late sixties and early seventies.

I could afford to. In1969, the year I first started ‘pubbing it’, a pint cost around two shillings (10p).

In fact, beer was so cheap you could go out on a Saturday night with a fiver in your pocket and have six pints, a packet of cigarettes, a fish and chip supper, a taxi home - and still have enough left over for a weekend in Blackpool.

Nowadays a pint costs around £3.

No wonder many of us can no longer enjoy the pub life like we used to.

It’s not the fault of landlords - they’re often unfairly hit by high rents and rates as well as unwise tax and duty increases.

To me, traditional British pubs are heritage businesses.

We should be doing all we can to preserve them, even if that means giving them special treatment on rates and taxes.

When I was a young man about town, my father used to ask: “Has our Allan gone out again?”

Before adding: “He must have magical powers that lad.

“Every time he walks down the street he turns into a pub.”

Nowadays it’s the pubs that are doing the disappearing!