It’s easy to tire of consumer documentaries with titles like How To Save Maybe A Little Bit Off Your Shopping Bill or The Corporate Approved ‘Secrets’ Of Enter Brand Name, thinly stretched out over an hour on a midweek evening.
There’ll probably be someone in a studio kitchen comparing one product with another, perhaps a day in the life of an eccentric shopworker, and definitely a segment with family of four The Typicals, who challenge themselves to do something for a fortnight and vow to change their ways for good.
YouTuber Thomas Pearson separates out all the chaff, and distils the format down to a punchy few minutes in How To Drink For Free In London (online). The context: a beer in London now costs an average £6.75 – that is roughly half an hour of minimum wage work.
“That’s before you even start factoring in travel, food, or the privilege of standing shoulder to shoulder in a pub that’s somehow both packed and soulless,” Pearson snarks.
To booze for free, he signed up to every bar and drink brand app going – specifically those that offer a free welcome drink in exchange for your email address (and many do).
He even discovered a “particularly broken loophole” that let him redeem free (albeit non-alcoholic) pints “with no meaningful limit” courtesy of Lucky Saint at every pub that serves it.
Pearson’s long night on the tiles is brutally edited down, leaving him with spare seconds for a sozzled but sagacious point to be made about the hospitality sector in 2026. Get this man a pint.
No comments yet