All had live bands playing with outdoor displays encouraging people to enter.
The three English bars allowed smoking whilst it was not allowed in the Irish pub.
On each occasion the English pubs were half full whilst the Irish bar was packed every night.
I think this spells it out clearly.
Proper English pubs and bars in England have not suffered under the smoking ban.
Backstreet bars which attracted mainly smokers in the first place may have done.
The reason why pubs are empty and closing is obvious.
It is because of the outrageous price of drinks in pubs and cheap supermarket booze.
Dave King, address supplied

Cameras not main factor in safety
Over the last 50 years or so, motor manufacturers have spent billions of pounds in an effort to improve all the safety aspects of their vehicles.
As a result the brakes, steering, lighting, tyres, and even the exterior bodywork on a modern car, are unrecognisable compared to any older car.
All of this work by very clever
engineers was aimed at reducing
injuries to drivers, passengers and pedestrians.
Their work was so good and effective that we now have lower casualty figures than ever before. How soul-destroying it must be for these engineers, having done their job so well, for a politician in the shape of Jim Fitzpatrick, the Road Safety Minister, to claim credit for their work.
He recently said: "We've cut the number of people killed or seriously injured each year by more than a third since the mid 1990s."
It is also reported that the drop in Lancashire has coincided with the
increase in the number of speed
cameras.
I think whoever it was who said that meant to say "coincidence".
The Treasury would have felt the pinch, but all I can say is: Think how much better the figures would have been without the cameras.
Peter Brown, via email

Meet women like you on the web
Your female readers may be interested in Henpals, which is a club for women to make contact with other local women.
I know, from my own experience, that when you move to a new place it can be difficult to make friends, as well as at other times in life such as leaving work to have a baby, being widowed, newly retired or coming through a
divorce.
The Henpals website means that women can find other members who live in their area to make friends and share interests together.
Among many other things, we have a book club with a monthly prize of a £10 book token.
Members can also send in photos and news of current projects for our monthly news page - many members are very interested in various aspects of needlecraft and lots of ideas are swapped in our forum section.
Annual membership of Henpals is £5 to cover our running costs, we have kept this as low as possible so that it is open to all women.
More information is available at www.henpals.com or do please email me at jenny@henpals if you have any queries.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Jenny Roper, Bramble Walk, Lymington, Hants