A long-time Killyleagh resident, Leitch admits to a preference for the Public bar "...when I have it nearly, not quite, to myself: say on a winter's night when the rain from the Lough is beating hard on the window-pane and you can sometimes hear a lost seagull above the sound of the lines banging against the masts of the yachts in the bay below."
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Maurice Leitch says "strangers can expect to remain that way for about five minutes at the most before the barman, Gervis, in his quiet, twinkling way, draws them gently into the conversation."
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At any time, he says, 'the craic' (conversation) is excellent. A perennial and hotly debated topic right now is the claim of three veteran drinkers in the place that between them, over the years they have downed a quarter of a million bottles of Guinness - give or take a few!"