Outcry over 'offensive' Top Totty ale helps sales

Staffordshire family-run brewer Slater's today revealed it has seen sales sky rocket since one of its ales upset a female MP.

Slater's sales director Fay Slater said the firm has been bombarded with phone calls and emails from landlords wanting to get their hands on barrels of Top Totty.

It comes after the four per cent beer was removed from sale at the Strangers' Bar, in the Houses of Parliament, after shadow equalities minister Kate Green said the pump clip, which features a half-naked lady, was offensive.

Slater's has sold around 50 more barrels than it shifts in an average week, with around half a dozen pubs saying they want to start selling the controversial ale too.

"We have had emails coming in from up and down the country – London, Scotland, Lancashire – you name it, wanting our beer," she said.

The parliamentary bar managers have since chosen their replacement for the Top Totty beer, Kangaroo Court, which is brewed at Salopian Brewery on Mytton Oak Road in Shrewsbury.

It is a mild four per cent blonde beer.

Meanwhile a Stafford pub has put up a sign to let local drinkers know it is proud to sell beer that has upset a Government minister.

Jane Andrews, and Philip McIntosh who both run The Hop Pole pub in Sandon Road, say weekly sales have tripled in the last few days.

Mr McIntosh said: "The day I put the sign up we had between 20 and 25 people come in saying they just had to try some."

Ms Slater also revealed she has been in talks with Stringfellows nightclub about stocking barrels of the beer, which has made headlines as far away as India and China.

The 33-year-old said she would be happy if the Strangers' Bar started selling the beer with an alternative pump clip but ruled out changing it nationwide.

Vicki Slater, owner of the George Inn in Castle Street, Eccleshall, where the brewery business started before it moved to St Albans Road in Stafford, said the beer was originally intended as a summer beer, but it proved so popular they decided to keep it on all year round.