Now it’s been converted into a natty little bed and breakfast place moored off Skegness.”But who would want to stay in a converted trawler?”Lots of people, believe you me People with a sense of adventure People who want fresh fish for breakfast People who might want to go to Yarmouth.”"Yarmouth?”"Sure. When you have a mobile B&B like Dunfishing, you can go to sleep in Skegness and wake up in Yarmouth Just ask the captain to sail there through the night.”Hmm What other forms of diversification are there?”Plenty. I know one trawlerman who has converted his trawler into a floating experience, which he has called Seaworld.”What does it do?”It goes to sea and gives you a sea experience.”I see. What else?”Oh, it’s becoming very popular for trawlers to be converted into casinos. Gambling laws don’t apply outside the 12-mile limit, so there are no restrictions.”The same, I suppose, might apply to film censorship?”Oh, yes – we have plenty of off-shore trawler cinemas showing adult films from round the world.”And what about sea sports? Can fishermen diversify into sea sports at all?”Not so easy,” says Sir Howard. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried water-skiing behind a trawler, but you never really get up to optimum speed Plus, there’s a lot of noise and smoke in your face Plus, lots of seagulls. But one or two ex-trawlers have become floating havens for bird-watchers.

The Sea Twitcher plying out of Immingham is a very good example. Of course, diversifying and converting your trawler for a specialised use does cost money, which is where we come in useful, as well as advising the trawlermen on the law.”What sort of legal problems do they run into?”Oh, well, you could imagine that if ex-trawlermen wanted to get into a profitable but frowned-upon activity such as illegal-immigrant smuggling or drug-running, we would have to advise them heavily against it.”And if they didn’t listen to your advice?”We would then have to help them keep a low profile. Mum’s the word.”And at this, Sir Howard Blenton grins and gives me a meaningful, cheery wink
More from Miles Kington. How weird must it be, to hear the most famous woman in the world plug your product on prime-time TV?

How weird must it be, to hear the most famous woman in the world plug your product on prime-time TV? Picture, if you will, the people who run the Timothy Taylor brewers when they settled down in front of Jonathan Ross’s chat-show last weekend, and heard Madonna describe what she loves about British life. “I figured out how to drive on the wrong side of the road,” she told Ross, “and I’ve learnt to love ale Timothy Taylor’s is the best real ale.” Bloody hell. Did their jaws drop? Did their hearts start to pound? Minutes later, she was at it again, offering a heady insight into the private life of the Ritchies as they sit, of an evening, incognito in the Dog and Duck in Soho, where the attitudinous Queen of Pop apparently gets her round in like one of the lads.

“I wear flat caps,” she said, “and I speak low and order a pint and a half of Timothy Taylor.” She did not dilate further on her bar technique. She failed to reveal whether she favours a straight glass, a box of logs (ie matches) and a pack of pork scratchings to accompany her order. But with this off-the-cuff bit of product placement, she sent a whole industry into a loop.
I’m not a marketing consultant, but I’d estimate the publicity value of that casual double endorsement as in the region of £92,000,000,000,000, though that may err on the side of caution. The big brewers such as Courage, Youngs and Fullers must be gnashing their teeth with envy – or sending a dray horse round to Madonna’s family pad in Marylebone for her to try a pint of Directors or Winter Warmer or London Pride. For Taylors is a small, independent, family-run brewer in Keithley, West Yorkshire.