Tony Hadley abandons Coffee Club for brewer's arms

Tony Hadley's invented a whole new beer, although the photo from the Gazette & Herald makes it look like he's been made to do it as some sort of punishment:

Naturally, the headline writers have an opportunity to shoehorn in some references to Spandau Ballet's back catalogue:

Tony Hadley’s new golden ale sure to be a true hit

I don't think they quite got that to work, did they?

Hadley explains his ale:

He said: "I love it when you're sat outside of the pub on a summers evening and you've got a beautiful golden ale that just goes down so easily.

“That's the kind of drink we want to make; a brilliant, brilliant summer ale."

Not one of those difficult to drink beers that defy gravity, or are shaped like pianos. This one will be liquid and flow downwards through the throat. "I bet if Duran Duran made a beer, it'd be an awkward beer that had seen too many French films or something. And yeah, it might still be able to be served in one of the really big pubs, but that's because it's just content to churn out the old hits and doesn't have any integrity, right?" he mumbled, before pulling another pint, downing it in one and carrying on.

"Every now and again people are going to want something different so we are trying to give everyone a little bit more flavour.

"When you make a beer you want it to be the best tasting beer you can imagine. I think it is going to be fantastic."

"... you know, like that time we re-recorded all of our best songs for a new studio album. That was to give people some flavour. It wasn't trying to squeeze the last beer out of an old pipe or nothing. It wasn't like that at all. It was fantastic."

By the way, if you're thinking "well, at least Hadley didn't do the cheesey thing of calling his golden beer something like, say, Hadley's Gold"; he couldn't. He'd done that with a previous brewing adventure. ("Moving north" in that story appears to be a code for "closing down").