TikTok star slams Oxford city centre pub over ‘lack of fruit’ in drinks
Charlotte Toller is based in Bromley, Greater London, and is on a quest to find the best Wetherspoons in the UK.
The 20-year-old university student plans to visit and rank all 800 pubs by the age of 30 and came up with the idea with her boyfriend Finn Hutchinson, also aged 20.
Miss Toller is judging each establishment on criteria including cost and appearance, as well as how far away the toilets are from the bar, the quality of the carpet and general atmosphere.
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During her visit to Oxford, she gave kudos to the Swan & Castle on Castle Street for its well-thought-out carpet choice, which has swans and castles on it.
Yet while in the city, the university student also visited a watering hole on the other side of the scale.
Miss Toller gave The Four Candles on George Street a mere three out of 10 score.
Her reasoning was that it was hard to find a table and, when she did, it was dirty and her beverage had “no fruit”.
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Miss Toller first had the idea with boyfriend Mr Hutchinson when they were enjoying a few drinks at The Richmal Crompton, their local Wetherspoon pub, or “Spoons” as it is more colloquially known, in September of last year.
“We realised that on the Wetherspoons app you can tick off all the ones you’ve been to and we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could just tick all of them off,” she said.
There are 800 Spoons, according to the pub company, so Miss Toller, who is studying journalism at the University of Roehampton and also works part-time in a pub in her local area, said finding the time to undertake the project has been a challenge in itself.
However, she has set herself the target of visiting all Spoons by the time she is 30 and has been documenting each visit on TikTok.
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In order to pit the pubs against each other fairly, she orders the same drink – an Absolut Vanilla vodka and Pepsi.
“I find it crazy how you can order a drink and the price can be double or triple what you would pay in certain parts of the country,” she said.
This is under the handle @charlsaurus, where thousands of people have become engrossed in her thoughts on the 13 pubs she has rated so far.
Miss Toller’s most viewed video so far has been on her Oxford trip to The Swan & Castle, which has been viewed by more than 350,000 people.
“I did not think I would ever go viral, I just wanted to have a bit of fun,” she said.
