Sharon Griffiths meets....Paula Waters

BLAME it on the Double Maxim... it's why a North-East lass is the leading champion of proper beer drinkers.

Paula Waters from Seaham is the new chairman of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, the first woman to have the job. And a definite blow to the image of real ale drinkers as bearded blokes in baggy jumpers.

It's not the only image she wants to change. She hopes, of course, to get decent beer more widely available, and to get more of us drinking it - but especially women. Beer is definitely a woman's drink, she says. Better than wine. "All those tastes and subtle flavours." And she should know.

She started on beer young, in the Dun Cow at Seaham.

"My mother and stepfather aren't great drinkers at all, so I didn't really grow up with it. But when I was in the sixth form, friends and I would go up to the Dun Cow. And while my friends had girlie drinks like Pomagne and Martini, I'd be drinking Vaux Double Maxim. I just liked the taste. Then there was Theakstons Old Peculier in the Seaton Lane Inn..."

Old chaps in the pub got used to this young girl and her pints, but even in these liberated days there are still combatively few women beer drinkers.

Apart from Madonna, of course, who recently said she was partial to a few pints of Timothy Taylor's Landlord. No reason why this shouldn't be a trend. Paula is enthusiastic.

"There's such a range of tastes in beers that there's something for everyone. All you have to do is persuade people to try it and they're bound to find something they like."

But - despite Madonna and Paula - beer is such a boys' thing. Even the names are off-putting, whether it's the funny punny names - Bishop's Finger or Old Fart don't exactly have girl appeal - or the simple "stout" "mild" and "bitter".

"They don't tell you much, do they?" asks Paula, "So you can see why people don't rush to try them. Brewers are often very good at making beers, what they're not so good at is marketing them, especially to people who aren't already beer drinkers."

Which is one of the areas to which she plans to bring a women's touch.

Paula's not totally new to the job, having been involved with CAMRA for years as chairman of CAMRA books - "if only there were as many books about beer as there are about wine" - organiser of the Great British Beer Festival, and vice chairman for the last three years.

After studying textiles at university in Bradford ("The refectory was a long trek away, but there was a decent pub across the road...."), and law at Wolverhampton, she's currently a teacher in Shropshire, married to Tony and mother of five-year-old James.

At university, she went to her first beer festival. "All this real beer and cider. Oooh, I thought, I like this..." And so ended up organising them. "Everyone has a hobby. Mine was running beer festivals. Brilliant, you get to taste all the beers."

People who come to beer festivals tend to be converts to the cause already, so Paula likes organising beer tents alongside others festivals. "Gives us a wider range of potential customers, especially young people," she says. "We have lots of them, especially women, drinking beer."

Her particular favourites are hoppy beers and stouts. But she's always keen to try new beers.

"It's back to marketing again," she says. "We're all very conservative in ours ways really and stick to what we know, partly because we don't like to look foolish."

If brewers told us more about their beers, described them better, if pubs pushed us to try more - "Most decent pubs will offer you a taster," says Paula - then more of us might find we liked beer.

But it's tricky. Pubs and beer are dominated by the major brewers. It's a global market. Small independent breweries find it hard to survive. And we buy so much of our booze at supermarkets.

"But think how little the British knew about wine 20 or 30 years ago and how that's all changed. We've really broadened our taste there and we could do the same for beer."

We have a brief mental beer tour of Britain - Holt's in Manchester... Greene King in Suffolk... Marston's... Hook Norton... Bateman's... Woodforde's Wherry... St Austell, ending up with a pint of Cameron's Strongarm in Hartlepool.

Beers are a great British heritage and like wines, reflect their region. "I like Scottish beers, don't like Welsh," says Paula. "It's just a matter of taste."

And no, she doesn't spend all her spare time drinking, but because she's always on the lookout for new beers and new pubs, she and Tony certainly like trying new places, new drinks.

But in matters of style - increasingly important in the drinks we choose - again, the continentals could show us the way, says Paula.

"Think of drinking beer in Belgium where every beer has its own glass. It makes every beer different and makes you aware of the different tastes and varieties."

It's not that long ago - only just before Paula darkened the doors of the Dun Cow - that women were barely tolerated in certain pubs. And many landlords refused to serve women with pints of beer, until a court case ruled that they could not be fobbed off with half pints.

But landlords still try and serve women their beer in a lady's glass.

"That's not a glass, it's a vase," says Paula, who refuses to drink from one.

But whatever the glass, the chances are that by the time Paula's finished her stint as chairman, more women will be drinking more beer and enjoying it.

Let's drink to that.