Sauchiehall Street pub crawl in search of a prized pint under £6

The Herald Scotland

23-06-2025

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The classic components of this impish compound consists of vodka, Southern Comfort, a 275m bottle of Blue WKD topped off with orange juice, but really you can customise it with a variety of appropriate infusions from the same genus. It's one of the signature drinks of Campus which offers it in £6 pints along with their £26 Jugs of Joy, a formidable, but delightful combination of Vodka, Malibu, Peach schnapps and orange juice that promise to provide you with your five-a-week in one pitcher. Like the Venom cocktail though, it possesses an in-built versatility which lends itself to mixing and matching.
Writer Kevin McKenna on the pub trail in Glasgow (Image: Robert Perry) I was first introduced to these sepulchral concoctions – along with Dragon Soop and Leccy Melon - by my lively nieces, Niamh and Anna who are always eager to update me on what's happnin' with the young dudes on the streets of Glasgow in the witching hours.
It's the middle of a Saturday afternoon though, and thus far too early for tasting belligerent cocktails. And besides, my desiccated innards are long past the point where they can easily ingest such dyspeptic substances without irreversible damage. And anyway, I'm really here for the beer as the first stop on a mini-pub crawl to overlook the pricing arrangements on Glasgow's edgiest boulevard.
According to a recent industry survey conducted by The Morning Advertiser, the average price of a pint of beer across the UK has risen to around £5.17. The figures showed that a pint of beer in Scotland, England and Wales has risen 34p in the last three months. Brewers and publicans commonly point to the drinks and hospitality sector's perfect storm of higher taxes, steeper utility bills and increased staffing costs. And rarely a week passes when you haven't heard one of your ask you to 'guess what they're charging for a pint of lager in the city centre'.
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According to the data, London – as you would expect – is home to the steepest prices, coming in at an average of £6.10, with Guinness reaching £6.45 and Birra Moretti at £7.17. Not surprisingly, Tennent's remains the number one, stalwart, all-weather pint throughout Britain at an average of £3.50 a pint.
I was always wary around those characters who claimed to discern vast fluctuations in quality between one lager brand and another. How could they tell after the fifth or sixth pint? And what was the point anyway in only having one or two? You're not walking out of a pub just because the lager is scraping your thorax on its way down.
Campus is the sort of place where once you might happily have got wasted in that guiltiest of pleasures: the unplanned sesh. Here is where you could sink whiskies and pints perusing the sports pages and occasionally falling in with strangers with whom you could release your store of pent-up, delinquent locutions after weeks of observing correctness.
Writer Kevin McKenna at Campus (Image: Robert Perry) Sam behind the bar tells me that Campus gets busy between 10pm and 11pm on the weekend nights when it shuts at 3am. 'We don't do pitchers of lager unless it's for a major television sporting occasion like the Champions League when we'll do a meat-feast platter and can choose Carling or Moretti or Coors.'
The beer prices are fair, coming in at £3.70 for a pint of Moretti. If you're keeping below four quid a pint in the city centre then you're doing well. 'The venoms and the cocktails haven't really gone up,' he says, 'and the beer prices only modestly.'
Just up the street is The Variety Bar, perhaps the most steadfast and familiar pub name on Sauchiehall Street. Its faded yellow Art Deco frontage promises elegance and a measure of jaded sophistication on your bibulous caprice. It's been on the corner of Sauchiehall Street and Elmbank Street since the 1960s and was saved from the threat of closure five years ago by current proprietor, Gayle.
'We've done some fixing here and there and some re-cladding plus the electrics and the upholstery,' she says. 'But what we wanted to avoid was altering the character of it too much.'
I order a Guinness at a hefty £6.25, followed by a lager at a more reasonable £4.85. If I'm being honest though, I'd have paid a tenner for the black stuff. It's been too long since I last had a pint in a proper tavern such as this and they clearly know what they're doing with it … which is not often the case.
Gayle makes no apologies though, for adding a small premium to her drinks. 'The pricing isn't really a huge deal for our customers any more. Our customer base is a bit older and a bit more varied than what you would normally see on this part of Sauchiehall Street.
'You pay for your surroundings. We keep it a bit more expensive than the rest of the street on purpose. This is not a place where you'll find shots and venoms. You're paying for the quality of service and the surroundings; a smile behind the bar and a better quality pint, expertly stored and poured. It's a proper pub. We're not hiding the fact that we're a bit pricier than some other places.
'We don't really need teams of teenage lads who have maybe not yet learned how to handle their drink properly.'
The Variety is one of Glasgow's most charismatic and photogenic shops. It could serve as the set for a gritty crime drama where two tired detectives are being cynical about 'the force' or discussing their suspicions that a colleague is a gangland plant. It's where doomed office affairs get conducted in thrilling hopelessness. You'd pay whatever they asked for a drink in here.
Later, I'll set foot inside the Hengler's Circus, one of those Wetherspoons establishments which middle-class flag-wavers believe to be nests of Brexiteers and Reform supporters. Today it's hoaching and mainly with multi-generational families spending an afternoon with budget lagers and no-nonsense pub food. In here it's £1.99 for your Worthington's and £2.49 for your Bud Light and £2.99 for your Coors and Carling. The swanky continental brands range from £3.89 to £4.49. Traditional cooked breakfasts are £3.99. Who's worrying about the utilitarian surroundings with prices like that?
In the early evening I return to this street as it begins to throng with Glasgow's young demi-monde in all their fleshy finery. They arrive here mainly from the city's working-class neighbourhoods. They can cut about in these palaces at the wrong end of Sauchiehall Street in their finery like royalty after a week in which they've been treated like serfs. They're not really paying for the drink, but for the fleeting feeling of being loved and appreciated.
And you say your prayers that these stunning wee princesses all get home safely.