Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Pub Britannia, 24x7

WHERE MONEY TALKS

No more will a resonant "Last orders, please!" provoke a stampede to the bar

A small part of the England I knew in adolescence vanished in the coils of Tony Blair's Cool Britannia this week as licensing hours were abolished. No more will "Time, Gentlemen, Please! Time!" ring sonorously through the smoky cacophony of the end of the evening. No more will a resonant "Last orders, please, Gentlemen! Last orders!" provoke a stampede to the bar and a frantic counting of change. Providing they obtain the proper papers, Britain's 80,000 public houses with fancy names "" there's even one called "Mahatma Gandhi" "" can now serve customers round the clock.

The 11:30 closing time (10:30 in some areas) was a relic of World War I, introduced so that factory workers turned up for work the next morning without a splitting head, a thickly coated tongue and a mutinous temper. Work, then, was the evil of the drinking classes. But it was an article of faith with those who boasted of the blood in their alcohol stream to grumble that the arbitrary cut-off time actually encouraged heavier drinking.

"You should see them in Cardiff!" was the regular refrain from Land's End to John o' Groats. The god-fearing Welsh (preying on their knees and on their neighbours) had the shortest drinking hours of all. Consequently, they were said to make up for lost (robbed) time with chasers of neat whiskey with each pint of draught bass gulped in a race against the clock. "You drink more," the wise intoned, "if there's less time to drink in."

We never thought of it as a serious argument. The comparison with Wales and also Scotland (whose natives notoriously kept the Sabbath and everything else they could lay their hands on) was intended facetiously to express our own resentment at abbreviated evenings. Now, it would seem, that we were prescient beyond our years. For the reason for extending drinking time is not, as the cynical might suppose, to mop up more revenue; it's to cut out what is nowadays called "binge drinking" but was presented before as a night on the tiles.

Binge drinking is lethal beyond any student lark, turning town centres into cesspools of violence. Worried by rising crime, road accidents and sexual attacks, the government has launched a £2.5-million campaign to publicise new measures to crack down on drunken misbehaviour. "Get drunk and disorderly, get arrested, get an £80-fine," warns a poster showing a man urinating a trail of glittering coins into the gutter. Another poster flaunting the same legend depicts a puddle of vomit "" a common enough sight on Oxford pavements every Sunday morning "" moulded into the shape of £80.

It's early days still to say whether this publicity will have any effect. But the pub that stays open day and night marks yet another stage in the evolution of a uniquely British institution with an extraordinary capacity to change with the times without losing its essential soul. A black and tan raises no political hackles nowadays though one comes across young barmen, as I did in Cambridge three years ago, who have never heard of the drink that once provoked murderous Irish reactions because it symbolised the uniform of British soldiers. The individual publican is extinct: breweries own today's pubs and appoint managers. There have always been singing pubs; now there are also karaoke pubs. Wine by the glass is one innovation, food another, letting the young in a third. Trailing around with my son, then 10, in the 1980s, I parked him in a Manchester pub yard and dashed in for a beer and, for him, lemonade. "Where y'going?" asked the landlord in wonderment as I was taking the lemonade out, and was aghast at my explanation. "Bring him in for Chrissake!" he commanded. "It's cold outside." I explained that Deep was underage. "No such thing," he retorted, "We serve meals."

Apparently the 18-year rule that almost landed me in jug when I was 17 had gone. A pub where you could munch counted as a restaurant. That too was new. You were lucky in the 1950s if you got a hardboiled egg in a pub. Then came sausages and cold pies. Only one intrepid pioneer I knew in Newcastle installed a gleaming machine to grill chicken legs. Now, there's the snotty new genre "" the gastropub "" that not only serves food but prides itself on its recherche cuisine, and commendation from Egon Ronay, the nonagenarian food guru. The more exotic the fare the better, and the Britannia pub down the road from where I am writing this in Brighton specialises in Thai food. It is still recalled with resentment that in the run-up to the decision on the Olympic site, Jacques Chirac observed of Britain, "After Finland, it's the country with the worst food." Now, the Brits insist, any gastropub is superior to a French bistro.

No wonder they sing, "We will defend the Union Jack, We will fight for the Crown. / We will honour the Queen and Prince, and every other pub in town." Patriotism lies at the institution's core. The more pubs change the more they remain the same.