Because the Coach, my friends, is the closest the Cocktail Girl gets to a Local. Oh, I know what you're thinking. Why would a full-time shiny cocktail-swilling trollop like myself - a denizen of upmarket hotel lobby bars and private-members' clubs - need to include something as prosaic as a local pub in her boozing repertoire? I'll tell you why. It's partly because I believe that even the most glam among us share the Cheers gene, a desire to be part of a drinking community, the parameters of which are defined by one single bar. We all need to be able to walk into some joint, somewhere, and have the bar staff nod at us in vague recognition, before pouring us a measure of The Usual. It's what makes us human. And it's partly because the Coach & Horses is really close to the place Cocktail Girl calls 'home'. Er, I mean, 'the office'. Two-and-a-half minutes away from my actual desk. Consequently, I've spent some quality time there.

Define 'quality'

Shouty, blurry, lairy, giddy, despondent, heckling, giggly, over-excited, flirty, grouchy, bitchy, et cetera. I have laughed there, I have cried there, I have fallen over there, and I have eaten a lot of hummus and chips there. I have come up with a gazillion brilliant business plans there. (Among the best: fakepregnancy.com; and whatshallIhaveformylunch.com).

Alone?

No! I have accomplished all this in association with my esteemed colleagues.

I daren't even ask.

Due to its geographical proximity to The Observer, the Coach is not just the Cocktail Girl's local - it's the entire newspaper's local. Ever since it got a good refurb in 2003, it's been something of a natural destination for the lot of us. It's where one goes to bust deadlines, hide from editors, commiserate over sackings and birthdays, write columns, plot the downfall of competitors, and generally be a bit drunken hack-like. Anything of any significance goes down at the Coach. All the scandal, all the grand traditions. It is here, on the first Tuesday after the Easter bank holiday, for example, that the OFM team routinely declare rosé season open. And here, sometime in July, that we rename rosé 'middle-class heroin', on account of its sneaky and deadly potency. It's here that all the great inter-desk romances are played out; here that the resident lotharios - of both sexes - prey on clueless new employees. And it's here that rude, slurry, too-long words are exchanged, when deadly hack rivals encounter each other shortly after a late edition of the paper has been put to bed.

So it's a den of iniquity for a bunch of ghastly journos with mangled livers and far too high an opinion of themselves?

Actually, it's a classy joint. The Coach & Horses is proper gastro. It's got wooden floors and a nice outside with benches and flowers and your mum would like it. The loos are clean and the wine list is substantial; and it serves roasted sunflower seeds instead of crisps. The bar staff are civil and good-humoured (although that can waver a bit at chucking-out time, especially if one of the regulars gets it into her rosé-addled head to start saying: 'Have you got any idea who I am?' a lot, because she thinks it's really, really funny). It doesn't smell. It's won awards, for heaven's sake.

So the pub's nice, but the clientele is questionable?

You say 'questionable', I say 'colourful'. And I'm sure the Coach appreciates us. We're woven into the very fabric of the place, now. All the best evenings start with Just a Quick One in the Coach.

And end at chucking-out time?

Er, not necessarily. Because it's then that we often go to the après-Coach institution, Al's Bar. Which I'd tell you about, except that: what happens at Al's, stays in Al's. It's best that way.

· The Coach & Horses, 26 Ray Street, London EC1; 020 7278 8990