Meet the City fan whose Guinness reviews have made him an unlikely celeb

It is a scene that was replicated in households up and down the country. People stuck at home during the Covid lockdowns pondering a new career.

Among them was Jason Hackett from Didsbury, now in his mid-fifties.

You may well know him as ‘Primemutton.’ And his decision to branch out into social media has proved a fruitful one. It has made him an unlikely celebrity.

His food and drink reviews on YouTube and Instagram – and in particular his takes on the best pints of Guinness on offer in the UK and Ireland – have earned him an army of followers known as ‘Muttonistas.’ Fans of the black stuff hang on his every word and await his declaration that he has found an ‘Absolute creamer.’

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His catchphrase has now become common parlance amongst many Guinness fanatics and has even made its way onto flags at Glastonbury and his beloved Manchester City. He already had a rather unusual day job. Jason was, and still is, a professional bridge player who plays at international level. “The money’s not great, but what you do get is a hell of a lot of free travel” he says.

Jason classes himself as a beer ‘connoisseur.’ “I’d say also know quite a lot about food and wine as well,” he says.

As a younger man he was predominantly a real ale drinker and says he got into Guinness ‘by accident’. “I went to a few places where no casks were available, so I said ‘well, I’ll try the Guinness instead’ and I kind of got into it” he says.

One of his regular haunts was a now closed social club called St Edward’s Confraternity on the border of Rusholme and Moss Side. “We used to go in there after playing bridge and there was some great celtic rock music and quite a good pint of Guinness” he said.

“I’m actually a dual British/Irish national. My grandfather is from there. I don’t know if that makes me a plastic paddy, but I found it quite liked it. But I was aware of people telling me it’s different gravy in Ireland.

“After that, I thought, well, I quite fancy going to Ireland and giving it a try, I think it was 1992 or 93. I went over and I was absolutely mesmerised by what I was drinking there and it kind of made me realise how much better it is over there than over here. With the exception of Guinness storehouse which served a bad point then and still serves a bad phone to this day.”

It was during lockdown he thought he may be able to turn his passion into a vocation. “I’m not somebody who likes sitting still and staying in one place for a long time. I’ve always travelled and moved around and like everybody else, apart from being a bit bored sitting at home all the time, I spent a lot of time watching stuff on social media.

“I watched a lot of vlogs about the stuff that I’m interested in and know a lot about, and I kind of thought, ‘well, hang on, these people are getting huge numbers of views and it’s clear a lot of them don’t know what they’re talking about’.

“I thought well, I can tell a story well. I’ve spent 30 years travelling around, seeing places trying different things and going to some of the weirdest countries and I thought, ‘I can do better than this’. So I bought a load of equipment and just practised in the park and from there, it really took off.” His online moniker is an old nickname about mutton not possibly being prime.

Jason, who isn’t married, is a lifelong City fan and his first notable vlog was of his trip to Porto to watch City in 2021 Champions League final in Porto. “When I started my Instagram account, it was just so my friends could see what I was doing and where I was.

“The YouTube stuff that I do, it actually was more me going to City games, which was my first focus. And then as the restrictions eased providing food and drink videos from places like China, Pakistan’s Zimbabwe, South Africa.

“I went over to Ireland to play a Bridge event and so I thought ‘well a bit before, a bit afterwards I’ll blog a few guest places’. It’s a drink I’ve always liked and it’s also somewhere that I knew would be quite popular.

“I’d go to a place, I’d share the outdoors of the pub, the indoors of pub, chat to patrons. Soon afterwards, I was going to the Man City game against Young Boys and to get to Geneva, the prices from the UK were absolutely horrific and there was an incredibly cheap flight from Dublin. So I thought I’d spice up the video a bit and start off the match day in Dublin and a few pubs.

“I went to this pub called The Gravediggers. I did a couple of reels and popped them onto my Instagram, which was not attracting that many followers at the time, whereas the YouTube was going rather well. And I’ve never seen anything like it, my phone was just buzzing with likes. From about 900 followers I ended up like a month later with about 70 or 80,000.”

He is now riding the wave of the current Guinness boom that has seen pubs running dry amid a national shortage in the run-up to Christmas.

“Yes I would say it’s become more popular again” he says. “I think a lot of it has got to do with social media. I think people have seen that there are places you can go to in Britain, and particularly in Manchester, where it is quite good.

“Also, I think a lot of younger people have got fed up of these bars with live music where everybody is having Jager bombs and things like that and want a more traditional pub setting. Maybe you could call it an ‘old man’s pub’, but I mean these days, those so-called ‘old man’s pubs’ actually have quite a variety of customers of all ages.”

So what does Jason think constitutes a great pint of Guinness? “Well the aesthetics are important to a point. I would say that something that I get unhappy about is an oversized head or in fact, a very thin head” he says. “If its a very thin head, I’ll just reject the pint.

“I would say that you can tell a bad pint by looking at it. A good pint you don’t always know until you taste it, because sometimes pints that appear good looking are not always that good.

“I don’t want anything that’s sour, I don’t want effervescent. I don’t want it to be too bitter and the worst sign is a metallic taste. You’ll know what it is when you taste it. I get people sending me pictures of their pints which they claim are great, and I’m glad they’re enjoying them and glad they’re having a great time. But some people don’t know what a good pint is.

“I’ve been drinking it for the best part of three decades, and I’ve been to some of the places where it is really good in Ireland and I’ve also checked out other stouts, Beamish, Murphy’s, London Black and some other independents.

“I’ve had the good pints and the bad and I know what a good pint tastes like. So my reason for doing this is to get the right people, into the right pubs, drinking the right beer.”

If he approves of a pint, Jason proudly proclaims it as an ‘Absolute creamer.’ “It’s just something that came to the top of my head” he says. “Because everybody talks about creamy pints and I thought that would be quite catchy, rather than assigning new miracle grades to pints, as it is so difficult remembering every pint you’ve had.”

“The best pint I’ve ever had in Manchester was at The Station in Didsbury” he says. “However, for consistency, I’d say Mulligans is best.” “I would also like say that people shouldn’t be afraid of trying alternatives to Guinness” he adds. “Because whilst Guinness served in Ireland is absolutely the king, apart from liking boomish over there, I like London Black porter a lot over here.

“And the stuff, when it’s served well in Britain, trumps the best Guinness you can get in Britain. As much as places here try to get it as good as Ireland, they can’t. And there are alternatives worth experimenting.”

He now has 142,000 followers on Instagram and 18,000 subscribers on YouTube and sells his own merchandise. At one City game earlier this season a flag appeared with his face and the words ‘Absolute Creamer’ on which Jason describes as ‘surreal.’ But he says it is now typical of the attention he is getting thanks to his work.

“At matches probably I’m having probably at least a dozen selfies every match, and the pubs, if its a well known stout drinking pub, quite a lot in there as well” he says.

“I think it was a week and a half ago I was in The Salmon of Knowledge in the Northern Quarter. I quite like that pub because they have three or four different stouts on all the time and one from cork, which you almost never see, Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy, I will pose for a billion selfies.

“But the amount of attention I was getting, the chaps behind the bar at last orders said ‘we’ve got one for you so you can enjoy a quiet one to yourself as we’re closing.’