THE SAYING goes you can take the girl out of Wales but you can’t take the Wales out of the girl.

And for one Southampton landlady that rings louder than the last orders bell at The Bent Brief.

Maureen Evans,55, runs The Bent Brief pub in Lodge Road with her husband Andy Wade, it is a creative hub full of entertainment and she has put her Welsh stamp on the popular watering hole.

One of the first things people notice when they walk in is Maureen’s welcoming smile and broad Welsh accent. She has run the pub with Andy for nine years, and has been living in Southampton for 37.

Maureen remembers almost everyone that walks through The Bent Brief’s doors, which is one of the reasons the punters keep coming back.

She said: “We like to call everybody by their name here, and people come down from as far as Basingstoke to visit. We try to offer a friendly warm atmosphere, where people can enjoy entertainment free of charge.”

From pantomimes to jazz, it offers an eclectic range of music, which reflect the owners tastes. While Andy loves opera, Maureen loves blues and jazz. Nearly every day there is a different live act, musicians know the place for its reputation and one of the pub’s former regulars was blues musician Gordon Haskell.

The pub also isn’t just good for music, having a tipple doesn’t break the wallet with Alton’s Pride which costs £3.10, and there’s a choice of three real ales.

Throughout the pub there are little touches of elegance. On the wall is mural depicting jazz players that used to play in the Joiners pub more than twenty years ago.

The only thing they don’t have at The Bent Brief is the comedy aspect, just down the road there used to be a pub called the Honest Lawyer, and having the Bent Brief on the same road gave it an extra selling point.

However, the pub doesn’t need a selling point, all it needs is its two friendly owners who put their heart and soul into making the place somewhere you can go back to, time and time again.