I hadn't been to a beer festival before, so when Will suggested spending Thursday evening in a colossal room in West London, I said yes, alright then. However, nothing had quite prepared me for the sheer scale of the event, or indeed the men. So many men. As the train pulled into Kensington Olympia, huge armies of blokes equipped with guts that would withstand the roughest, peatiest ales marched purposefully towards the ticket gates. Will, Ant and myself looked around, laughing at the dissimilarity between CAMRA's advertising (which features pictures such as this) and the real thing, which looked more like this. We stood in a long queue of men waiting to get in, as other men – wrecked on pints of Wobbly Gob and the like – stumbled in the opposite direction, having spent the whole day drinking, and the last hour of that day fashioning paper hats out of their programmes, and scrawling the word “BEER” all over them in blue biro. You could see kebabs in their eyes as they dribbled their way home.

Still. We hadn't started yet, so we walked past a bag check and up to the ticket desk. I was on my phone, and I was just saying “hang on a minute” while I bought a ticket, when a fat, odious man (I won't use the adjective “fat” any more in this entry, by the way, as it will quickly become redundant through over-use) said “No, we don't serve people on their mobiles, next please” and beckoned to the person behind me. I stabbed my finger into my phone to end the call, and gave him a few choice words. He avoided my furious stare. This made me feel extremely big and manly, which was a good start, as I was to become bigger and more manly as the evening progressed.

The stands were divided into regions, with the Scottish, North Eastern and West Midlands ones being particularly busy, and the East Anglian and Welsh ones rather less so. At each stand you were confronted with a bewildering array of beers with abysmal names: “Fine Soft Day”, “Takin' The Pith”, “Hop-A-Doodle-Doo”, and, er, “Tea”. CAMRA supplied you with a beer guide, but in the cut and thrust of activity at the bar, any referring back to the guide for tasting notes immediately relegated you to the status of poofy wine-sipper, so you just pointed at a barrel and slammed the money down on a table. Attracted by the prospect of a beer that tasted like a bumbling vicar, I had some Nimmo's XXXX, which was sh!t, and I had to ask them to pour it away. “Isn't Derek Nimmo dead?” asked Ant. “Yep, I think so. Good that they're keeping his memory alive, though, isn't it.” But we couldn't reach a consensus on this, so I texted AQA, who replied that yes, he is dead, an answer which cost me £1.

It was time to eat something. The most common substance in that building – after beer, of course – was pastry. So much pastry. And, after the pastry, meat. So much meat. Amidst the pastry and meat was a solitary stand dedicated to healthy eating and called “Olives And Things”. The queue for pies stretched across the front of the stall, while the solitary stallholder despondently stirred a few kalamata around in some brine.

After pies, of course, it's time for fun! This is provided for in abundance at the festival, with table skittles, barrel rolling and a number of Heritage Pub Tombolas. Pick a ticket: if there's a “1″ in the number, you've won a prize! We did well, coming out of it with 2 packs of cards, 2 bottles of beer and 2 pint glasses for a small outlay. It felt more like we were stripping the heritage pubs of their contents than doing anything to help them survive. Will had a go at some kind of primitive wooden 10-pin bowling thing; he was rubbish. “Rubbish!” I shouted. Will smiled, manfully. We were all being manly, by this stage.

After fun, of course, it's time for Chas & Dave. We were lucky to have chosen the night when a US chart-topping band were playing, because the acts on the other nights looked distinctly ropey: Paul Young (I thought his vocal cords were covered in nodules? Maybe he's playing xylophone or something these days) or, uh, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. Chas & Dave were introduced by a compere, whose words were translated into sign language by a woman to his left for the benefit of the hard of hearing. We hoped BEYOND HOPE that she might stay onstage throughout the set, and we might see her sign the words

yup yup rabbit yup yup yup rabbit rabbit bunny jabber yup rabbit bunny yup yup yup rabbit bunny jabber yup yup yup rabbit bunny jabber yup yup bunny jabber rabbit

But she didn't.

We went back for more pie to sustain us through the final hour, and at a nearby sausage stall a slender woman was standing in front of hordes of pissed men who were staring at her, firstly not comprehending the presence of a slender woman in the building, and subsequently forgetting what it was they had actually come for. “For god's sake, come on, you GANNETS”, she screamed.

With several thousand men getting increasingly devoted to their beer, and with increasing amounts of vomit on the floor having to be covered up with multicoloured batches of sawdust, it became clear that soon some brave soul was going to have to call time. Imagine. Imagine telling this lot that they couldn't have any more. In the event, everyone filed out reasonably quietly, with occasional bursts of singing and chanting. No doubt most of that lot will be back for more, today. Today, incidentally, is “Hat Day”. This has been introduced by CAMRA in order to inject a note of fun into the proceedings, by encouraging attendees to wear an amusing hat. When Will advised me that Thursday was Hat Day, I asked him which day he was thinking of going. “Oh, probably either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday,” he replied. Of course, he's right. If you've drunk enough beer, who needs a hat?