MovieChat Forums > The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1982) Discussion > how many pintes for a fiver!?

how many pintes for a fiver!?

posted 16 years ago by Mjenner23
9 replies | jump to latest

Just brought this series (for £2.50 which I believe is a bargain) And I have to say the first thing that got a laugh out of me was in episode one when Ford and Arthur are in the pub. Ford gets a round of drinks and hands over a £5 note and tells the barman he can keep the change. Now even on student nights now days it's near to impossible (unless your a young lady with cleavage showing and a very short belt that your trying to pass of as a skirt) to go out on a Fiver alone. Anybody else amazed by this? LOL!

[–] Sic Coyote 16 years ago

£5 in 1981 is the equivalent now of £14.75

so it's not unreasonable to assume you could get 6 pints for £14 and have some change left.

Actuallyu a little bit of research shows that average price for a pint of beer in the UK in 1981 was between 60 and 70p.

[–] Mjenner23 16 years ago

If only that was the case today. Student nights would be very interesting :D

[–] Sic Coyote 16 years ago

Except that the average weekly wage was probably more like £100 rather than over £250 now

[–] ShepherdSpy 16 years ago

It doesn't detract from the story,but does otherwise date it!

If Book was in Intelligence B4 finding God,does that mean He's a Shepherd Spy? (Thank You,Spike..)

[–] sawatts 14 years ago

My first pint, which must hav been circa 1981, cost about fifty new pence as I recall. In a proper pint pot - with a handle ;)

...aaaahh Beer...

[–] HALs_eyeball 12 years ago

Necro-posting! I love it! Anyways...

This line was a hang-over from the original radio series which was 1978. So you could easily get six pints of beer and still leave enough for the barman to enjoy himself!

I don't often go to pubs these days (long story and I'm not going to go into it now!) but this week I paid £3.09 for one pint of shandy. Thing was, I thought I'd misheard and gave the barmaid £2.10. I held my hand out for the penny change. She blinked at me and asked me for another pound!!

Instant optimism with NASA Further Up Yonder: http://youtu.be/AmS20epgSOY

[–] TigerWarg 10 years ago

necro-posting? great concept.

the first pint I bought was 1/11 (in old money). You could still get 2 pints for less than a pound in most of the country in 1980, so Ford ordering 6 pints and saying keep the change from a fiver would still apply in 1981.

[–] foxboro27 8 years ago

This is a great thread! 😀 As of an 2015 article I found, the average pint in Britain is now: £3.79. Times have sure changed.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-most-expensive-pint-pub-6688858

[–] churchr-1 8 years ago

In the early seventies I was paying fifteen cents for a mug at The Stein House in Marietta Ohio.
Cans were something like thirty five cents, but I'm not positive because I couldn't afford them. One night we wanted a six pack to go at another bar and had to pay the outrageous price of three dollars because, the bartender said, the band had started.