Punch Taverns offer could be knockout for students who just want to stay in the pub

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After all, they might think, pubs don't open until 11am, only two hours earlier than they presently get up.

And since in the evenings they are in a pub anyway, it might as well be one where they can pour themselves free drinks.

It's a plan of Baldrickian brilliance, so it's almost no surprise to find that Punch Taverns now wants to make this dream possible.

Britain's most-indebted pubs group, no small achievement, is making 236 pub properties available to graduates under a new scheme called the Capital Builder.

For just £5,000, the students are given the chance to show that they can succeed where the previous landlord, an idiot presumably, failed.

That's a much lower level of entry to the pub trade than is usually required, but quite a lot for a student who may already have a similar debt problem to Punch's. (The company has debts of £3 billion compared with equity of £500 million even after a £350 million rights issue last year.)

Students tempted by this offer might want to ask why it is being made in the first place. On the one hand it's a decent PR stunt for Punch, it shows imagination and brings fresh blood into the industry.

But it also hints at desperation. Running pubs that are tied to big landlords such as Punch is a tough game. Hundreds fall by the wayside each year, with life savings spent and dreams shattered.

Graduates thinking of signing up for this deal should do one thing: get in touch with the previous occupant of the pub they have in mind and ask them what went wrong...