Winchester SitP, Thanks For Coming

On Monday evening, I was starting to get a little nervous that the 30 capacity function room booked for our first Winchester Skeptics in the Pub might not be quite big enough. I thought if we are lucky enough to get 40 people, then we won’t fit in.

I rang Dave Hughes on Monday night and we made an executive decision to find a bigger pub. Dave went out the very next day and located the Roebuck Inn. They just happened to be redoing their kitchens and hence the dinning room was currently available.

We booked the pub and did our best to get the new venue details out to everyone.

I should have realised that we were in for good night when I pulled up in the car park and nearly bumped into Jack of Kent, making a surprise and much welcomed visit to our kick off meeting.

The venue looked pretty good, so whilst we were setting up I asked the Bar Manager about the possibility of using the pub for future events. She explained that once the kitchens are running again the dinning room would be unavailable, so sorry.

And then you started to arrive...
A quick head count revealed attendance just shy of 100. Hence when we chatted to the Bar Manager again at the end of the evening, she decided it prudent to offer to shut the resturaunt early if we would like to come back.

So just a brief summary of the evening itself...

Rebecca Watson gave everyone a great introduction on what “Skeptics in the Pub” is all about.
And then kindly introduced our main speaker for the evening, Simon Singh.Simon gave an inspiring talk, touching on some of his work on “Big Bang” and the genesis of his book with Edzard Ernst, “Trick Or Treatment”. Simon explained the resulting libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against him as a result of a related article in the Guardian and clearly emphasised why a reform of the English Libel laws is required.

A truly awesome opening night for Winchester Skeptics in the Pub and we hope to see you there for future events.

Great to meet so many of you including lots of people new to me and also a great many familiar faces as well as the chance to connect some twitter and facebook friends with real people.

Hope to see you all again soon and as you can see, we were all rather pleased with ourselves.[Dave Hughes]

[Crispian Jago]

[Sid Rodrigues]