That was about the time that Camra - the Campaign for Real Ale - got going and people were beginning to demand more choice.As time has gone by we've modified the pubs in hundreds of thousands of other mundane ways. For example, we cut prices to 50p a pint less than our competitors were charging, turned off the music so that people could talk, and started serving food all day long. I used the pounds 10,000 I made from that as a deposit on a pounds 70,000 lease for Wetherspoon. I had to refinance the whole business to get out of that mess, although I was able to get back pounds 20,000 by suing the solicitors many years later.Wetherspoon was different from the beginning because it sold a range of regional beers. My solicitor told me I would be able to renew the lease when it expired eight years later, but that wasn't true The pub wasn't worth half what I'd paid for it I was technically insolvent unless I could extend the lease.

I thought the pubs near where I lived - in Wood Green, north London - were poor so I started going to one in Muswell Hill that had been converted from a betting shop. Unlike most London pubs then, it sold a range of regional beers. As soon as I saw it I was convinced that if you put a pub like that in every suburb they would all do well.I had bought a flat with a 100 per cent mortgage as a student, and was able to sell it when the market was high in 1979. I did study law, and passed my bar exams, but I never practised. And it wasn't my local - it was miles away.And that's the point. I almost made a Horlicks of it simply because I didn't know what I was doing. I'll always remember the first morning at the original Wetherspoon.

I couldn't unlock the doors to let the cleaner in and by the time the locksmith had opened them it was 11 o'clock, customers were arriving and it was still a mess from the night before. Some retail companies open their first outlet in South Kensington and it's like lighting the blue touch paper It wasn't that way for me. I had quite a few years of not being a success before it worked. But looking back, I think the lack of immediate success was quite good for me.I have been described as a Kiwi barrister who liked his local so much he bought it That's not entirely true I was raised in New Zealand, but I was born here. Lazard Freres is handling the sale for the bank in New York..