Guinness, like Irishness, has always been an object of specific fascination in the UK.
The pour, the settle and the Provos. It’s a structural pillar of Irishness both at home and abroad, with even Keir Starmer tentatively holding a pint in a “is this okay?” fashion during a recent UK-Ireland summit.
It was sacrament for the diaspora sequestered in Irish pubs in Kilburn and Digbeth: white-haired men in flat caps speaking mournfully about the old country in Cockney, Scouse and Manc accents. But this was always niche fuel for a niche fire. All of which makes the recent (nitro) surge in popularity of Guinness in both UK online and real-life culture even more remarkable.
Creamers. Domage. Schtick. You make your poor father uncomfortable with this kind of talk, but these terms have now entered the common lexicon. British social influencers have based entire Instagram and TikTok accounts, and livelihoods, on such quality markers as they seek out the dankest public houses across the UK (and now Ireland, too) to find a real pint.
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It’s not uncommon these days to see a group of fashionably baggy Britons doing their own G-splitting photo call outside The Gravediggers or Kehoe’s or Soho’s The Devonshire. (ie, drinking a single gulp of Guinness of a precise amount such that the line between the white foam and stout bisects the letter G on the glass).
These social media marauders are in your favourite snug – and they’ve brought a ring light and mics. They have merch, they have toucan tattoos; they may even manage one of several Instagram accounts dedicated to snugs.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with content creators developing their own micro media hubs (in the distant hope of a Diageo brand sync). It’s also great business for traditional pubs struggling for regular trade.
But the question does arise: what is this? Is this the central thesis of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle writ large (where real life is replaced by representation)? Are there perceivable limits to this product fetishisation beyond Guinness shortages at Christmas time?
The apotheosis of this is Netflix’s recent offering House of Guinness. Conceived, written and shot in the UK, it stars some emerging Irish talent such as Anthony Boyle and Niamh McCormack, and a few English actors putting on their best Dublin brogue.
One imagines an ideation session replete with a word cloud in a London boardroom: Stout, Fontaines, Kneecap, Lankum, Say Nothing, Succession. Yes, love it. Somebody take a pic of this whiteboard. Dump it all into a Peaky Blinders blender, et voila.
Leaving aside the well-documented historical inaccuracies and swerving of the city of Dublin for the shoot itself, there is something strange about this whole enterprise.
It appears we’re moving into a liminal realm where a type of derivative Irishness is being defined from outside the country and packaged back to us.
This is not a unique endeavour. Hollywood has long left its mark, with its mystical Irish hayseed depictions and whatever Wild Mountain Thyme is, but Britain had long resisted any projection of Irishness that wasn’t Troubles- or Mrs Brown’s Boys-related.
Now, Grian Chatten, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal (in his GAA shorts) are on the 100 Sexiest People in London list and, per Second Captains, North London men are telling Irish expat women in smoking areas they should have the Six Counties back – and all they wanted back was their lighter.
So is Guinness, especially in an Anglo-Irish context, a more palatable brand of Irishness for the wax-jacket set? The Anglo-Irish are instinctively fearful of their children becoming Irish like Mo Chara at the crown courts, Sally Rooney’s support of proscribed activists, and the renewed Irish love affair with indigenous language and music. Or is this just an expression of cultural longing for some young British people increasingly left cold by their own flag-heavy culture?
‘Perhaps we should just enjoy and embrace the broad-spectrum rise of Hibernian soft power for however long it continues to soar’
Why is curious Instagram staple Prime Mutton hamming around Dublin pubs testing stout for his largely British followers? Do Cockney boyos measuring the cream content of pints with T-squares in North Dublin pubs signal something more profound at play?
This is certainly a worthy topic of pub conversation next time you’re visiting Stoke Newington’s The Auld Shillelagh, sitting next to some mustachioed young Londoners in vintage county jerseys. Or perhaps we should just enjoy and embrace the broad-spectrum rise of Hibernian soft power for however long it continues to soar.
Maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all.
Will Keena is from north Co Dublin but has lived abroad since 2011. He has lived in the UK’s Peak District for the past three years (where there is beautiful scenery but no decent Guinness!) and he works in marketing in London
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