The Youngest Publican in Cornwall!

I never knew at the time but I never thought looking for jobs for my future wife would end up by me being the youngest Publican in Cornwall.

My career, I thought was mapped out, Council worker by day DJ by night, not quite having the final push be becoming a DJ full time. However, my wife to be was living up country with her parents and every day I would scour the job pages of the local newspaper, circle in red any that I thought were any good, and then pop them in the post. One day I saw this advert for a couple to train as publicans, without thinking I circled it and sent it off. The reason I had done this was because of a brief conversation I had had with her of ‘how nice it would be to run a pub one day’, nothing more than that.

A few days later I was on the phone to my future wife when she said ‘we have an interview’, I was completely puzzled. I said ‘surely you mean you have an interview’ the response came back, ‘no us’! It was fair to say I was not happy, probably shocked; my ‘little world’ was just about to change.
The following weekend we were due to go for an interview, it was a dreary January day, I even had to miss my favourite football team play (at the time that seemed like a huge sacrifice). We arrived at a beautiful country pub just west of Launceston, Cornwall. The interview was nothing special but I thought at the time we did enough. At the end of the interview we were told that a decision would not be made for a week.

During that week the doubts crept in to the point I couldn’t wait any longer so instead of waiting for a phone call, I phoned. To my surprise we were offered the job! At a later date I found out that we were second favourites for the job, it just so happened the favourites had an accident the previous week which stopped them from accepting the job.

Apart from starting on a very successful 10 year period within the licensed trade, it was a real opportunity to develop skills within my own business and start to believe everything is possible. Within six months we were to manage our own pub and I was going to be the youngest Publican in Cornwall.