Letter: Terry Jones obituary
Terry Jones had a love affair with beer – and he helped make it as well as drink it. He was a passionate supporter of Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale, and in 1977 he founded with Peter Austin and the Guardian journalist Richard Boston the Penrhos Brewery in Herefordshire.
It was one of the early micro-breweries and it encouraged Austin – known as the father of micro-brewing – to build plants in many parts of Britain, the US, Europe and China.
I recall going to Penhros on a bitterly cold Saturday in the depths of winter and sampling a delicious beer called Jones’s First Brew. That same year Terry officially opened the Great British Beer festival at Alexandra Palace, north London. He said that while wine tasters like to sniff, sample and spit, for beer drinkers it all depended on how the drink hit your boots.
To prove the point, he proceeded to pour several pints of beer over his head. When he’d finished, he was drying himself off and changing his shirt when two photographers from national newspapers, carrying cumbersome plate cameras, came over and one said to Terry: “ ’Ere, Tel, we didn’t catch that – would you mind doing it again?” The great trouper that he was, he then doused himself in beer for a second time.
Terry said that while the Penrhos brewery didn’t survive for long it did inspire others to follow in its tracks. Among them was David Bruce, who launched his chain of Firkin brew pubs. Today there are several thousand small craft breweries.
In 2003 Terry contributed a piece for the 30th edition of the Camra Good Beer Guide called My Love Affair with Beer. “Beer, for me, is more than something I like drinking,” he wrote. “It’s a litmus of civilisation. If the society is making good beer, then it’s a healthy society.”
In 2014, when the Pythons reformed in London, I contacted Terry and told him a small brewery in Yorkshire, Little Valley, brewed a beer called Python IPA. He was delighted and said he would order a crate for the dressing room.
As he said in his Good Beer Guide piece: “Real ale is a civilised drink. Keg beer is a dead parrot.”
