How did this Fool's Journey begin?

Myself and two other guys used to do project work for the Post Office. On one particularly long project the work had massive peaks and troughs which could last weeks. When the peaks hit we just had too much to do in too short a time, but during the troughs we sometimes had almost nothing to do. Unfortunately we had a Victorian-style boss who equated bums on seats with work being done, so we couldn't leave early/arrive late/take time off. So we filled the time with all kinds of discussion and nonsense. One particular discussion was around which was the best pub in Brighton. This lead to a decision to make a big list of the pubs we knew and run a Eurovision-style competition to work out the best. As I recall we managed to make a list of 40-odd pubs that day. I can't remember the winner.

Anyway, over the weeks of a particularly long trough this competition evolved into a quest. We would go on post-work research missions (read: pub crawls) to see the various pubs and score them. Over time a scoring system evolved and the list of pubs we knew of grew. At first we just started noticing and remembering all the pubs in the streets around us, then added others that other people told us about, then others from magazine adverts and the telephone directory. The number grew. As it did and knowledge of our quest spread, so other jurors joined. The results became more reliable, the system was tweaked to ensure the overall ratings reflected our personal views on the pubs. The list grew to its current level of 300.

Over the years that followed there have been hurdles. Brighton has an ever-changing pub and bar culture. Places change their names, redecorate, management changes, new bars appear and in turn are transformed into old pub or vice-versa.

Anyway, it got to the stage that it seemed that something really valuable had been created. And with photographs, maps, and some fleshing out (club info, pub crawls, games etc) it became the forthcoming book that it is now.