Did you notice a bigger than usual number of customers at The Palladium in Midsomer Norton High Street on Thursday?

That was because the chain had a one off 'sale' cutting prices by up to 7.5 per cent across all its 800 pubs across the UK.

The move from Wetherspoons was to highlight Tax Equality Day. Pubs and restaurants pay 20 per cent VAT which was reduced to five per cent during the pandemic.

Wetherspoon chairman, Tim Martin, said: " Taxes should be fair and equitable. It doesn't make sense for the hospitality industry to subsidise supermarkets.

"However, it is unfair that supermarkets pay zero VAT on food, but pubs and restaurants pay 20 per cent. Pubs have been under fantastic pressure for decades due to the tax disadvantages that they have with supermarkets.

"We applauded the Chancellor when he reduced the level of VAT to five per cent and then to 12.5 per cent (for food and drink served in pubs) and urge the Chancellor once again to reduce VAT, thereby creating tax equality between pubs and supermarkets.

"He should also note that the main impact of tax inequality is on high streets and town and city centres, which heavily depend on a diversity of prosperous hospitality businesses for economic, social and employment success."

Do you know the history of The Palladium ?

Unused for over 20 years, the former cinema first opened its doors in 1913 as the Empire cinema/theatre.

Two years later, it became the Palladium Electric. In 1934, the premises were enlarged, improved and renamed the Palladium cinema. The name can still be seen in the triangular area above the entrance. The Palladium closed in 1993, with a showing of Cinema Paradiso.

One of the historical photos from the interior of the pub shows children's author Roald Dahl who sold kerosene in Midsomer Norton and the surrounding area in the 1930s. He described the experience in his autobiographical work Boy: Tales of Childhood, published 1984: "My kerosene motor-tanker had a tap at the back, and when I rolled into Shepton Mallet or Midsomer Norton or Peasedown St John or Huish Champflower, the old girls and the young maidens would hear the roar of my motor and would come out of their cottage with jugs and buckets to buy a gallon of kerosene for their lamps and heaters. It is fun for a young man to do that sort of thing. Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset on a fine summer's day. "