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Practitioners of my trade have been known to frequent licensed premises from time to time. Not for pleasure, of course, but for business: this is where we often find our stories. But when it comes to pubs, hotels and restaurants, my subject this week makes me feel like a teetotal hermit.

The Hodgson family have created a virtual dynasty in the catering industry, one which started in a so-called "kitchen house" in Westmorland (nice to use a proper county name) and progressed to some of the most famous hotels in Northern England. These include the Chase Hotel on the Knavesmire in York, home to the gentry for race meetings, the Midland in Morecambe, famous for its art deco interior, and - for many years - the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey.

Robert Hodgson, chef, publican, hotel manager, restaurateur and one-time boot black, is the third generation to go into catering. He might even have become one of those TV celebrity chefs - but for the siren song of Upper Wharfedale.

He tried to escape time and time again, to London, to America, even to the old wild West Riding, but he always comes back. Yet, technically, he is a Lancashire lad, born in Morecambe in 1955. The family moved to "the Dev" at Bolton Abbey in 1959 and it was there young Robert was first exposed to the hard graft of the catering trade (nowadays called the "leisure industry").

"My grandfather had worked his way up from a farmer in Westmor-land whose wife sold the odd jug of ale from their front parlour," he said over a pint in the Old Hall at Threshfield. "And he had taken the Devonshire originally because it still had a farm. There was an awful lot of work to be done and I pitched in whilst at school. My job was to get up at 6.30am, light 10 coal fires and then polish the guests' shoes. One day, I had forgotten to chalk the room numbers on the bottom of the shoes and they all got mixed up.

"I got a right rocket, but that was grandad's way: he wanted me to learn everything about catering. He used to say: When you grow up, you must never ask anyone to do something you can't do yourself.'"

After Giggleswick School he went off to catering college in Leeds and from there to some very posh hotels in London: the Park Lane and, for the odd shift, the even posher Dorchester. But he hated it.

"London is the loneliest place I ever lived," he said. "I couldn't get over the fact no-one ever spoke to you - passed the time of day. So I started looking for work closer to home."

That entailed running a huge pub in Huddersfield at the age of 23 - he was said to be the youngest publican in Yorkshire - and then, ever closer to home, the Mason's Arms at Eastby, "but still the wrong side of the hill from the Wharfe".

The travel bug struck again and he went off to America to seek his fortune on the Caribbean cruise liners. By this time he had met his second wife-to-be Jo, who hails all the way from Burnsall and was then a student at Leeds University. On a trip back home, he was hitch-hiking when fate intervened in the shape of my good friend, but unrelated namesake, John Sheard, then manager of the Bolton Abbey Estate.

John was looking for someone to run a small cafe selling tea and scones at the dilapidated but historic Barden Tower. Robert took it on, more or less as a temporary summer job. He and Jo turned it into one of the most fashionable restaurants in Yorkshire. That "summer job" lasted 14 years.

Tired of the long hours - "I wanted to get some time to go fishing and shooting" - Robert now works from home in Burnsall as a catering consultant and locum chef.

And he is on the lookout for another business. That is unlikely to be another pub. As he says: "There are too many pressures working against a village pub these days." That's a story I might feel obliged to investigate further. For purely professional reasons, of course.

9:59am Friday 29th February 2008

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