Beer and sandwiches: At the Friendship Inn in Manchester

This column is our weekly pub review, written by pintsmen, women and children across the nation. Suggestions to letters@newstatesman.co.uk

By New Statesman

Illustration by Marta Signori

The Friendship Inn promises more than cheap pints (though the £3.30 midweek Guinness is admittedly a draw). It was so named for its historical role in bringing together the community in what was once the village of Fallowfield, now subsumed into Greater Manchester.

These days you’ll find a motley mix of students on pub crawls and locals only too happy to greet the invading species. All of human life is here.

Titchmarsh Terrace

When it’s 30-odd degrees out, a pub lives and dies by its beer garden. To call the Friendship’s roadside concrete terrace a garden would be to overstate its verdancy, but what it lacks in beauty, it makes up for in good humour and cheer. If it’s shade you’re after, there are plenty of corners inside in which to nurse a pint, or make some new acquaintances on the perilously packed long, shared benches.

Short back and bitter top

Alongside the bargain black stuff, the Friendship pulls beers brewed locally in Salford. A pub after my own heart, its commitment to shoddy puns is unflappable: the names of its rotating seasonal offering are, inexplicably, all hair-related. There’s the Hairy Porter, the Sherlock Combs and, come November, the Trump-themed Hair Force One – a big-flavoured, orange American ale. And for July, the optimistically named It’s Combing Home. There are certainly worse places to watch the World Cup, but the people-watching is the real attraction.