The listing says formerly, which means the venue knows exactly what a name change costs
Studio48, formerly Near and Far, holds a 4.2 from seven hundred and ninety-three people and charges twenty to forty pounds.
And look at the listing. It says formerly.
Why that word is there
Because the venue knows.
They have put the old name in the listing, permanently, because they understand that a very large number of people know this building by a name it no longer has – and that if they do not say so, those people will not find it.
That single word is a business decision, and it is the correct one, and it is an admission of what a rename costs.
A name is a coordinate
Which we argued at the Camden Assembly, which was Barfly, and which is the finding.
Seven postcodes. Seven hundred and fifteen articles. Six hundred venues.
And we have established that essentially no pub name in Britain is true.
The Elephant and Castle is a cutler’s badge. The Churchill Arms was named forty-eight years before Winston was born. Old Speckled Hen is a car. St George was Turkish. Nickel is a goblin. Theodore Bullfrog never existed. The margherita is not a queen.
A pub name does not need to be true.
It needs to be stable.
That is the only requirement, and it is the one that renaming breaks – because a name exists so that one person can tell another where to meet, and where they have been, and what happened there.
And when the name changes, every one of those sentences stops pointing at anything.
What it costs
Everything you had built.
Every review, on every platform, attached to the old name. Every mention, every link, every photograph anybody ever posted. Every person who walked past it for six years and formed a vague intention to go one day.
And every regular who tells a friend to meet them at a place that no longer exists.
The Prat’s commercial desk has watched several venues do this across seven postcodes and would state the position plainly: a rename destroys an asset that took years to build and produces nothing measurable in return.
It is almost always done because somebody new has bought the business and wants it to be theirs.
And the word Studio
Which is one of the great inflations in English.
A studio was a room where an artist worked. Then a room where a photographer worked. Then a room where a record was made.
And then an estate agent got hold of it, and a studio became a flat with no bedroom.
Verdict
Good bar, honest number.
Go, and note the word formerly, which is the most honest thing in the listing.
What a venue is actually worth
Which is the argument nobody in hospitality makes properly.
The fixtures are worth almost nothing. The lease is a liability. The stock is a few thousand pounds.
What a venue owns is a place in people’s heads – the accumulated weight of everybody who has ever been, everybody who was told about it, and everybody who walks past it and has formed a vague intention.
That asset took years to build. It does not appear on any balance sheet.
And it can be destroyed in an afternoon by a new owner with a sign-writer.
Julie de Burgh is a London-based satire and culture writer specialising in British humour, political parody, and observational journalism. Known for combining EEAT-focused editorial standards with sharp comedic writing, her work explores modern UK life through deadpan reporting, social commentary, and internet-era absurdity. Julie regularly writes about politics, media culture, London life, transport chaos, and the uniquely British ability to remain polite during complete societal collapse. Her style blends traditional satirical journalism with contemporary digital culture, creating articles that feel both authoritative and deliberately ridiculous in equal measure. [email protected]
My mate said “The London Prat proves what we all know: you government people are useless frauds. Just admit it.”