Walking through Warwick just after 9am this morning and a familiar sight greeted me, people outside the pub in the main square… Now I’m heading to work, and they are outside the pub, immediately something seems wrong with this picture!

But this is not just a one off, no, these same people are there day after day, you see them at lunch, you see them after work – they are the pub people!

Let’s put the obvious health implications of all day drinking to one side though. I’m not one to preach, each to his own. What baffles me is how they fund this lifestyle?! At more than £3 a pint at most venues in the town, how on earth do they afford it.

Has Warwick become a secret gathering place for lottery winners and rock stars? Are these people languishing outside the hostelries, sporting the latest in Primani anti-chic, actually running the world’s most elaborate double-bluff?

They swill their beer, but then in the evening they are off home to mansions and swimming pools. It’s onto the phone and Alfred arrives to whisk them away in the Bentley and present them with smoking jacket and cognac…

Something is going on here that the rest of us in our working world do not understand. The career adviser missed telling us of this possible life choice where beer, conversation and people-watching is a full-time activity.

When out and about keep and eye on this secret breed, we will catch them out, I’m sure only today I saw one of them raise his little finger while drinking from his pint glass – the signs are there…