Throughout Wellington the Christmas trees are going up, tinsel is being strung jauntily from every available surface and businesses are driving shoppers mad with endless repeats of Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas”, freaking “Snoopy’s Christmas” and anything from Michael Buble. [1]

In 1925, Albert Michelsen became the first man to run a true Marathon in under two and a half hours. In 1954, Roger Bannister was the first athlete to record a sub-four minute mile run. At the 1968 Olympics, Jim Hines became the first person to officially break the ten second barrier in the 100 metre sprint.

Tuatara Brewery is celebrating 15 years in business at Malthouse on Saturday.

 This is the fourth instalment of the energetically popular Malthouse blog feature titled “Staff Profiles in Courage.” The format, like the author, is deceptively simple – I sit down with a worthy Malty staff member and ask them a series of insightful questions.

Author Pete Brown is currently writing three books, one of which is about beer and is partially crowd funded.

With the Rugby World Cup over and my bacon sandwich eating days on hold until at least Christmas, for this week’s blog I faced the daunting choice of either going on and on about test cricket or actually talking about beer.