LANCASHIRE - which, for the purposes of the Good Pub Guide 2005's take on geography includes Greater Manchester - still boasts the cheapest beer prices in the country at an average é1.90 a pint compared with the national figure of é2.15. Within those figures, however, there's wild disparity.

Drinkers in Nottinghamshire, the next cheapest area, pay an average 3p more, 7p in Cheshire and 10p in Cumbria and Yorkshire. Down in Sussex, however, they pay 38p a pint more, in Berkshire it's 42p and in Surrey and London, 52p. And you can't say they don't deserve it.

The Good Pub Guide 2005 (Ebury Publishing, é14.99) is its usual mine of information and includes more than 120 new main entries. The death of the English pub is much exaggerated. Accolades go to the Cholmondley Arms in Bickley Moss as Cheshire's Dining Pub of the Year; to the Eagle and Child in Bispham Green, Ormskirk, as its Lancashire counterpart and to Manchester's Briton's Protection as Whisky Pub of the Year.

And by the way, the editors of the GPG have come firmly down behind making all pubs smoke-free. "We now believe that a ban on smoking in pubs is so overwhelmingly in the interests of customers and staff that we would like to see a ban in place as soon as possible," they say. Just one per cent of guide main entries are so far smoke-free.