Ian is the editor and publisher of Boughton's Coffee House.

TH: What is your favourite type of coffee, and where will we find the best one being made?
IB: Good grief, do you want to get me shot? My own favourite espresso style is a cappuccino, and there are two requirements for that – first, the coffee flavour has to ‘cut’ through the milk, and second, it must not be too hot… a lot of coffee bars serve it at a scalding temperature, which is a sin that should be punishable by public beheading.

Those of your readers/contacts who are in the business areas of London might find it ‘cool’ to seek out a coffee-cart, if you please, in the street markets of Whitecross Street and Columbia Road. This is run by one Gwilym Davies, who has just become the UK’s champion barista, and it should demonstrate that excellent coffee can now be found served by enthusiasts in many varied places, most certainly not just the familiar high-street chains.

TH: How have you seen consumers’ taste profiles and attitudes towards coffee change in recent years?
IB: There has been a bit of a move towards the ‘home barista’, someone who brews their own espresso at home. There’s a great satisfaction in serving a guest a cappuccino or latte you have just created yourself, and yesterday I was interested to hear a barista trainer say that more of his training is now done to individuals at home – coffee training sessions are beginning to be given as ‘experience gifts’. 

TH: How do you predict the coffee market will change over the next 12 months?
IB: Here is a scoop for you, or a heads-up, or whatever turn of phrase is currently fashionable - watch for the revival of filter coffee. A few moves have been made towards this already, a couple of machine developments have been involved, and while a few coffee houses have always had a ‘filter menu’, more are turning to it. 

The great advantage is that it allows for the brewing of the entire spectrum of the world’s great coffees, many of which would be ruined by putting them through the espresso process. A café owner can now offer the delicate chocolatiness of a Hawaiian Molokai Princess or the fierce earthiness of an Indian Monsooned Malabar, and do so quite economically – a filter coffee menu could, conceivably, be started with a kettle and a few cafetieres. A well-judged investment on good sensible equipment could still get a café started for a couple of hundred pounds, compared to which a decent espresso machine is three thousand and upwards.

TH: Describe your worst experience of working with a PRO?
IB: There are so many… and the best and worst experiences may, really, appear in a book later this year!

I will never forget being invited to an ethical-beverage event where, I was told, a tea grower from the other side of the world would be visiting a special ethically-branded café to address the press. I toiled all the way to get there, to discover that the venue was in fact a charity’s in-house staff canteen, that no other press had turned up, that the guy wasn’t giving a talk at all, and that I was to be seized and sat right in front of him to conduct a one-to-one interview for which neither of us were prepared, with lots of the charity staff sitting round to listen in. We did actually succeed in having a decent conversation, but no thanks to the agency.

This is similar to the age-old trick of the PR saying to the editor: ‘the MD of this company really wants to meet you’, and then saying to the MD that they’ve put a lot of work in to successfully persuade an editor to come and visit for a personal interview. What happens, of course, is that the editor and MD sit down and say to each other in unison: ‘so, what did you want to talk to me about?’

Any PR agency which tries such cheap tricks on us rarely gets a second chance.

TH: How about the best? 
IB: I was in Turin as the guest of a brand which styles itself ‘Italy’s favourite coffee’, and we rushed to the airport to find that the BA flight back to London was going to be an hour late, which meant I would miss my connection back to Cornwall, where we live and work. On arrival at Gatwick, many PRs in this situation would have made hasty farewells, and dashed off to leave me to sort the problem by myself… I’ve had that done to me before. But this PR girl stuck around, sorted out a hotel for me, booked a replacement flight the next morning, and didn’t leave until she was sure I would be OK. A few days later she gave BA such a rollocking that they sent me a £75 voucher in apology for the inconvenience.

I said to the PR girl that she really deserved that voucher herself – she replied that she’d given them such a going-over that they’d sent her a freebie voucher of her own, as well! I thought that was admirable assistance to an editor. Rare, and admirable.

TH: What is your favourite type of music, and who is your favourite artist?
IB: The news pages for Coffee House magazine are often written to the accompaniment of Planet Rock on digital radio. As an enthusiastic but remarkably untalented bass player, I have just joined my 53rd band, and am playing funk with Falmouth’s Soul Sensations –  my last three bands were gospel, trad jazz, and extremely heavy rock.

I’ve had the same fave guitarist for fifty years – Joe Brown, the almost-Cockney lad who was Britain’s first real rock’n’roll guitar hero. He hasn’t lost it.

TH: Tell us something we didn’t know about yourself?
IB: My better-half Trudi and I are beach bums. We live and work on a secluded beach overlooking the sea in south Cornwall, as a result of which I have developed an aversion to even small towns. A standing family joke is that Trudi’s desk is positioned to give her a wonderful view of the beach, barely a hundred yards away, while my desk gives me a view of… Trudi.