Pub Crawling With Prime Mutton, Instagram's Middle-Aged Man of the Moment
It's 4:30pm on Fog Lane, a busy east-west rat-run in the Manchester suburb of Burnage. The chill of a lingering cold snap hangs in the afternoon air and it is already dark, but for the glow of Reasons to be Cheerful, a neighbourhood craft beer bar sitting snugly between a discount clothing store and a dog groomer. Inside, the regulars are assembling. Coats off, jokes made, pints poured.
I go in and immediately the barman looks at me and asks, “are you Charlie Teasdale from Esquire Magazine?”, silencing the room and putting me at its centre. A bubble of unease grows, but is soon popped by the barman once again. “He told us you were coming,” he offers, smiling, "he’ll be here in a minute.”
While I wait, the fellas kindly point out the local attractions, including ‘chav alley’ – “don’t go crawling down there on your hands and knees” – and Sifters, a record shop where the Gallagher brothers discovered music, I’m told.
Suddenly, he is here. My reason to be cheerful.
Jason Hackett is a beer and food reviewer and content creator in his mid Fifties. As ‘Prime Mutton’, he is a legend of the algorithm and a social media phenomenon. 140k on Instagram, 1.3 million views on YouTube, and up to 300 Cameo requests a month.
You know him. He’s the Guinness guy on your FYP: the wide-eyed, moustachioed man in a pork pie hat staring intently down the lens as he blesses or condemns pints up and down the land. He is the globetrotting arbiter of “absolute creamers” and an icon to his loyal coterie of 30-something men, a group he refers to lovingly as the ‘Muttonistas’.
The Guinness boom of the past couple of years has been absurd. For the young and capricious, a pint of Guinness is a unit of clout; an aesthetic with which to identify, and a vital accessory to life on social media. You must know what ‘good’ Guinness is, you must ‘split the G’. In 2024, if you drink a pint of Guinness and don’t take a picture, did it even pass your lips?
Hackett has undoubtedly ridden the Guinness wave – as his burgeoning merch collection attests – and yet his content seems to sit on a different plane. There is no glamour, no sense of grasping for blue-collar prestige. He is not a derivative twerp in Sambas and a mullet, he is a charmingly earnest middle-aged guy in braces and a polo shirt. There are levels to this game.
As a proud Muttonista, I have long wanted to experience his oeuvre first hand, and perhaps better understand why it has cut through so wholly. Why do complete strangers love him like Caesar? I have come to Manchester to find out.
The night starts with two pints of London Black, a ‘nitro’ porter by Bermondsey brewery Anspach & Hobday, and a guaranteed creamer. I ask him how it all began.
“Like everybody else during lockdown,” he says, “I watched a shedload more social media than normal, and I thought, ‘there are people here presenting videos about certain topics, and it’s absolute tripe….’
Hackett’s day job is the card game, bridge. He is a former world champion, and a highly sought-out coach and exhibition player. His twin brother is a bridge man, too, and his dad, Paul, was the first ever bridge professional. I know, because he joins us for a drink.
Through bridge, and his support of Manchester City FC, Hackett has travelled the world, and as restrictions slowly lifted after the lockdowns, he started vlogging. It was slow at first, he remembers, but one late-2022 video-review of the Guinness at John Kavanagh’s pub in north Dublin – allegedly the best in the world – found traction. “As I got into bed that evening, my two phones were vibrating like mad from the number of likes and follows for the video.”
“In a month, I went from around 900 followers to 20,000,” he remembers. Now, Hackett posts a new video every couple of days. “My most important instagram of the week is Friday lunchtime,” he says. “People are looking forward to going out, it gets their juices going.”
It is a good time to be a middle-aged man on social media. One need only look at the irresistible rise of 45-year-old bedroom DJ Fish56Octagon, who came to prominence in the Spring, and is now one of the busiest DJs in the country. He played three sets at Glastonbury.
Or Chinese takeaway lover, boxing patriarch, and ‘bosh soldier’ Big John Fisher. A multi-hyphenate – big Chineses, podcasting, saying ‘bosh’ in different accents – his appeal is hard to pin down, but he has almost 550k Instagram followers, regularly appears at provincial nightclubs, and recently announced a multi-date live tour with a travelling sausage festival.
Why these guys are cutting through is unclear. Perhaps it’s the unadorned dad-ness, or the lo-fi production, or perhaps they offer some kind of antidote to the never-ending stream of food-tokkers, triathlon-bloggers, and obnoxious OOTD-ers.
“I think [my content is popular] because it’s wholesome and jolly, not too polished,” says Hackett of his own popularity. We have moved to The Station, a corner pub in Didsbury - Hackett’s dad gave us a lift. It’s busy; everyone’s on the Guinness, with one eye on the Europa League tie between Cercle Brugge and Hearts of Midlothian.
“Coming to an old school pub like this appeals to a lot of people,” continues Hackett. “In an age where everything is a little uncertain, and modernised very quickly, it reminds some people of the past.”
This is Hackett’s local, and the Guinness is indeed impeccable. Four young lads in Carhartt double-knees and puffer jackets come into the snug, spot Hackett and mutter excitedly to one another. I think they were hoping to see him. Two more lads, just out of university, spot Hackett and ask for a picture. They are almost giddy with excitement. They tell me they’re not exactly big Guinness drinkers, but they love what Hackett does.
In an Uber into central Manchester, I suggest Hackett’s commentariat is more polite and inclusive than that of other influencers, and he agrees. Unlike Big John Fisher, who regularly posts about the trolls that frequent his DMs, Hackett seems to inspire only gratitude.
“You get the odd trollish comment,” he says, “but it’s water off a duck’s back.” He used to reply, but now he just ignores it.
We get to Mulligan’s in central Manchester, and heads turn as soon as Hackett walks in. The doormen shake our hands ebulliently, and shouts of “creamer!” ring out as we head to a table, cleared of non-celebrity drinkers as we arrive. I feel like I am on the arm of a movie star; like it’s 1997 and I am a Gallagher WAG.
Mulligan’s allegedly serves the best Guinness outside of Ireland, which it might be, but things are starting to blur. Is it better than the Guinness at The Station? I’d say no, but I could be wrong. An Irish band is playing twee pop covers and Manchester United are losing to Bodo Glimt on the TV. The bar is packed and my dictaphone is useless, but I do get to witness what I came here for: a broadcast.
Hackett orders a fresh pint and pulls out his phone. A man nearby sees it and turns to his friends, “it’s him!” he shrieks, and suddenly it feels like everyone in the bar is watching.
“Goooooood evening Muttonistas!” says Hackett - his introductory leitmotif - holding his phone aloft selfie-style and staring down the lens. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, so time for a quality control check…” Hackett takes a long draft from the pint, never breaking eye-contact with his phone. “Now, I was just asked by another customer here if this is a creamer… I can confirm this is an absolute creamer!”
The bar erupts into cheers, the Irish band starts up. And we are off, running for another Uber as young boozers crow “mutton!” in our wake.
As the evening winds on, it feels like every selfie request serves to cement Hackett in an ever more salient sense of place. He may have long conquered his profession (not many people can claim to be a world champ), but perhaps even the heady heights of bridge can’t beat a night of fandom in England’s second city. “I still play at professional level,” he says, “but I’d rather diversify.” Just like Fish56Octagon and Big John Fisher, he is an idiosyncratic man plucked from obscurity to offer social succour in an age of confusion.
Finally, in Ancoats, some ballast. Hackett had promised the Edinburgh Castle serves the best chip butty in the city, but it’s late November, and all they can offer is the seasonal party menu only. So three courses it is. I sip my Guinness and rest in the sheer largess of the evening. “Well,” says Hackett, “you’re getting the full-Mutton experience tonight.”
We end at The Salmon of Knowledge, an Irish pub with all the glass, steel, and carpets of an All Bar One. There is a never-ending stream of people asking for pictures with Hackett. One twenty-something girl runs up and begs him to promise he won’t leave in the next 10 minutes. Her boyfriend is on the way and “he’s been searching for you for ages,” she pleads.
I manage another two pints before I hit the wall and leave Hackett to his people. I stagger, buoyed by the night - I have never seen so many people so very happy to see one person before. The next day, Hackett texts to say that he hung out for a while, and the staff let him stay for one final pint after closing.
Tonight, he will be in London for Anspach & Hobday’s Christmas carol party. He sends me a picture of the lyrics to Wilhousky’s Carol of the Bells, amended for the event. One verse simply reads:
Absolute Creamer
Absolute Creamer
Absolute Creamer
Every time
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