New landlord at The Starkie Arms wants to change its reputation

Leighton Cragg has taken over at The Starkie Arms pub in Padiham and he wants to banish its old 'rough' image and promote it as a music venue

Transcript

00:00 Doing really well. Me and my partner, we took over in October.

00:03 And the challenge was just to get people coming through the door again,

00:08 because they've been shut for a bit.

00:10 We have a full sport package which brings football fans in,

00:13 which is what we wanted as a sports bar.

00:16 And then recently, like the last month or so,

00:19 we started putting live acts on on a Sunday.

00:21 And that's going down really well.

00:22 So yeah, it was a challenge to start with, but we're getting there slowly.

00:26 When we told people we were taking over and they were like,

00:28 "Oh, you don't want to go there."

00:32 But I've always been up for a challenge and it didn't put me off.

00:35 And now we're dead set on coming here and we wanted to make a nice pub drive

00:40 and we're succeeding.

00:41 Obviously, we talk to people well, we're good with people

00:44 and they're starting to respond to us now.

00:46 And we look after them and they'll look after us in time, hopefully.