The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands.

Manfred Mann

I like pubs too, but it's hard for me to go and get proper bladdered in the way I used to. I don't want to moan about being recognised but I do get a bit of grief sometimes.

Alan Davies

Go back to the very beginning, when we first started playing in local pubs. We used to play Chuck Berry covers. Every now and then, we'd slip in one of our own songs, and we found that we were getting away with it - nobody seemed to know these were original tracks.

Angus Young

People were following me home in cars, singing outside my window at my flat. I couldn't go to pubs or supermarkets or walk down the street. It was bizarre, but that was my life.

Anita Dobson

Getting up in front of the toughest crowds, you know, playing pubs in South Armagh - where people didn't necessarily even know what stand-up comedy was - you had to force yourself to do it. It went against every instinct in your body, but you did it anyway.

Ardal O'Hanlon

I don't like discotheques, pubs, or late-night parties.

Asin

We'd get residencies in the local pubs. It was just an excuse to have a free tab at the bar, and then at some point people started chucking me a few quid for it. There was no game plan to any of it.

Ben Howard

Personally, I've never been attracted to danger. It's not my sort of thing. I am more attracted to pubs and cafes. The known, safe and comfortable world.

Bill Bryson

I started singing when I was 18 and landed my first record deal with RCA when I was 26 after a lot of grafting singing in pubs and clubs.

Bonnie Tyler

Pubs are, disturbingly, where I hatch most of my best idea-sculptures: possibly it's something to do with the disinhibiting effects of alcohol, or maybe it's just having company to yack at.

Charles Stross

I have walked into several pubs, and guys in there have said to me, 'My God, you are the girl off the dancing horse.' They have got no idea about dressage, and they said, 'I can't work out whether you make the horse do that or the horse does it itself - we just couldn't tell - but it brought tears to our eyes.'

Charlotte Dujardin

I'm just getting to know the local pubs. I do enjoy going out in east London.

Charlotte Ritchie

At the beginning of my acting career, I worked for two seasons at the RSC and spent a lot of time in the Cotswolds exploring Shakespeare's countryside. It's my kind of English landscape, with its tiny villages and one-room thatched pubs.

Cherie Lunghi

My secondary schooling was at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, so I'm fond of that part of the world. It's quintessentially English, with village greens, pubs and cricket pitches, and resonates strongly with me.

Chris de Burgh

I miss the banter with friends and family, which more often than not takes place within the confines of a decent public house. So I miss the pubs.

Chris Vance

For me, normal means freedom to live life as we choose, from cramming into packed planes to go on holiday to crowding into pubs for birthday parties.

Claire Fox

As a left-wing campaigner for 35 years, I've been arrested on picket lines, led anti-imperialist demonstrations and spoken at anti-deportation protests outside police stations. I've made speeches at street rallies, in prisons and universities and at pubs.

Claire Fox

There's this one called Raya that is Tinder for celebrities. You have to do corny things like put a song to photos of yourself: 'Daisy likes pubs! Horse riding! Looks good in a bikini!' It's all so mortifying. My male friend got matched with Courtney Love and if ever there's a reason not to be on those things surely that's it.

Daisy Lowe

When we started out in the U.K., there were songs that we made, we put them on the Internet, and we immediately started touring the U.K. We borrowed our friend's mum's car, and drove ourselves around for, like, a year playing gigs in pubs and tiny little venues. In that respect, we're pretty grass roots as a band. We've done all that together.

Dan Smith

The bronze dwarfs give you the first clue that Wroclaw is no ordinary city. They lurk all over the place, carousing outside pubs, snoring at the doors of hotels, peeking out from behind the bars of the old city jail.

David Hewson

I was 18 when I first visited London, I'm very provincial like that, but I must confess the moment I got to America I thought: This is the place. It was more open, with 24-hour cities and pubs and restaurants that didn't close.

David Hockney