Can pubfluencers save the proper boozer?

I recently visited a pub called The Camel in Bethnal Green. Tucked down a side street, its entrance was covered in chestnut tiles but the rest of the building looked as if the owner had run out of money and the tiler had downed his tools. The pub’s decor was shabby, the staff un-uniformed and chatty, and the crowd spilled out onto the street. An old local in a leather jacket, thinning hair slicked back, raced to the bar. He swayed on the home stretch, peeling off a piece of wallpaper as he grasped for balance, but crossed the line and ordered a drink. A young man looked at him and said to his friends: “This pub is so Jimmy McIntosh.”

That this clash of earthy charm and trendy crowd is now a common sight in London is thanks to the likes of Jimmy McIntosh (AKA “London Dead Pubs”). It is a combination that could have been created only by the internet. McIntosh is a “pubfluencer”, one of a host of TikTokkers introducing Gen Z to London’s historic pubs. Pubfluencers talk seductively of a prelapsarian age where there was a “proper boozer” on every street corner, without food, exposed lightbulbs, or bespoke “apps”, where everybody knew your name and could understand your job title. Their short-form videos pitch the last of the capital’s authentic drinking spots as living museums where, if you are really fortunate, you might even see a real-life Cockney.

The desire to retreat into our drinking past has never been stronger, all while our pubs face armageddon:  161 pubs closed in the first three months of 2026 (that’s about two a day), and only last week HMRC ordered officials to levy higher business rates  on pubs based in “attractive locations” or “character properties”. At the same time, an £8 pint of Cruzcampo means that, in many town centres, drinking on a Tuesday can feel like everyone but you has been warned of an imminent earthquake. In London, however, that is exacerbated by a lack of true locals, with a transient population moving between expensive pubs for their weekly extravagance. Perhaps it is asking for too much to allow us to take our heritage for granted, but in London, we have done something deeply un-English to our national pastime: we have made it a treat.

Amid all the fuss, it’s no wonder that young people have started seeking out a bit of old-fashioned London character on Instagram. McIntosh boasts 100,000 followers and (in a neat example of nominative determinism) a capacious Mackintosh coat. He has earned a cult reputation for producing articulate and thoughtful videos about old haunts, aided by surreal humour. In his scrutiny of the city, he has been likened to Ian Nairn, the boozy architecture critic who railed against half-witted postwar town planners. McIntosh similarly bemoans threats to cherished venues, but the usually exasperated Nairn was fighting when all was not lost. Making social media content about the state of London’s pubs in 2026, all McIntosh can offer is nostalgia for how they used to be, and recommend a few that still carry the torch.

The ‘usually exasperated’ Ian Nairn. (gallerydreams/YouTube)

Niall Walsh, one of McIntosh’s rivals in the nostalgia game, straddles old and new just as awkwardly. An Irishman with an account called “Proper Boozers”, he celebrates the right things, even if he could be more subtle in his working-class bingo: horse racing on the box, tat on the ceiling, cheap pints at the bar. In each video, his disembodied voice judges the pub on whether it meets his threshold of authenticity with the simplicity of a Roman sparing or condemning a defeated gladiator. Turner’s Old Star in Wapping, with its scratched wooden floor and fizzing Fosters? Proper boozer. The Blackfriar on Queen Victoria Street, with its pretty murals and overwhelming food? Not a proper boozer. “Maybe that’s nostalgia,” Walsh laments of his ideal pub. “Maybe those pubs are disappearing.” If they are, they are doing so slowly enough for Walsh, who has created a handy interactive map of London’s authentic hostelries, turning previously rough dives into the Bermondsey beer mile.

“Turner’s Old Star in Wapping, with its scratched wooden floor and fizzing Fosters? Proper boozer.”

Given Gen Z’s inclination to nostalgia ( one recent survey said that 47% of adults aged 18-29 would rather live in the past), they were clearly ripe for the taking as an audience. Each generation covets something of the previous, of course, but Gen Z’s obsessions seemingly slip into envy. It may be because they are fed images of the past every day; without the internet, of course, previous generations could live in relative ignorance of what their parents got up to. The past should seem quaint, yet it appears increasingly normal — more normal than the present.

The pubfluencers know that, repeating the phrase “bygone era” to death, sending a shiver down the spines of those who want what they have never had. The pub slots neatly into an imagined history of simpler, slower times, with images of grizzly regulars and…