Bolton pub of the week: The Victoria, Westhoughton

The Victoria, in Market Street, serves pints for as little as £2.70 and offers a hearty welcome to go with them.

Introduce yourself

My name is Lee Helme and I run The Victoria in Westhoughton.

How long have you worked here?

I’ve only worked here for 12 weeks, just as an interim.

But I’ve worked at the Punch Bowl in Atherton for 11 years, so I’ve got plenty of experience in the industry.

Lee loves it behind the bar! (Image: NQ) What’s the best thing about the pub?

The prices probably, we’ve got Wetherspoons next door more or less, so our prices compete with them. So yeah, we’re pretty cheap.

A pint of Fosters is £2.70, Carling costs £2.90, John Smiths is £2.70 as well so it’s not bad at all really.

We have some offers on as well sometimes so we do alright business wise.

Have you got a good customer base?

Yeah, a very good one, I tend to find when you’re running pubs that the ‘locals’ stop becoming locals and they actually become your friends, which is honestly the best thing about being in the industry.

The hours are unsociable but at least you get to chat to a lot of people.

But we’ve got a good bunch of locals.

Fancy a bit of darts? (Image: NQ) What’s the draught line-up?

• Strongbow

• Fosters

• John Smiths

• Guinness

• Birra Moretti

• Stella Artois

• Carling

• Magners

• Magners Dark Fruits

• Coors

Does the town have a good night scene?

It does, Westhoughton is thriving at the moment, people do a bit of a run down Market Street with the pubs, they come in here and move on to some of the other ones.

Do you have any events on?

We did have a singer in a couple of weeks back, and we’ve brought karaoke in on some nights.

But we’ll look to do more of that in future.

Admiral Taverns is currently on the look-out for someone to takeover running the pub so get in touch with them if you fancy the role!