Vertical drinking in British pubs could become a thing of the past as customers are being told to stay in their seats while sipping their warm beer.
Drinkers are outraged at the prospect of loosing the right to stand shoulder to shoulder as they guzzle at the bar while publicans are worried their costs will go up if they have to provide a better service.
Recent rulings by magistrates in York and London have restricted new licences to premises where drinkers are forbidden from standing - known in the trade as vertical drinking. Publicans have been told they will have to ensure customers remain seated to try to create a more civilised atmosphere.
'This will never work. Part of the character of a British pub is that no one tells you whether to sit or stand. If you have rules like that it's not a pub anymore,' said Mike Ripley from the Brewers Association.
Most of Britain's 61,000 pubs are owned and managed by big breweries who are constantly looking for new ways to drag in more customers. Some have experimented with bars which provide a cafe-type table service.
Seventy years ago, the Government nationalised a small Scottish brewery in Carlisle and as part of an experiment divided the brewery's pubs into those with table-only service and those without seats. Within a few years the bars which required drinkers to remain seated had gone broke while the standing-only pubs continued to do business.
