Pub A pub , also known as a bar , was a public building found all over England , Scotland and Wales where communities would gather for social drinking and conversation . Pubs also served full meals . ( PROSE : " The Sow in Rut " ) The owners of pubs were called landlords . ( TV : " The Dæmons " , " The Android Invasion " ) Their employees , who served food and drinks , were referred to as bartenders or barmaids . At least in 1960s England , one had to be eighteen to gain entrance to a pub . Susan Foreman expressed in her diary that pubs were very strict about this rule when Gillian Roberts tried to convince her to fake her age and enter the Pump . ( PROSE : " Time and Relative " ) Meetings at bars or clubs could often end in or lead to sex ual encounters . ( TV : " Day One " , " Out of Time " , " Dead Man Walking " ) Owen Harper frequently visited bars for this very purpose , but , after dying and being resuscitated by the Resurrection Gauntlet , found himself unable to generate an erection due to lack of blood flow , and ran away from a woman who was hitting on him . ( TV : " Dead Man Walking " ) The Sex Gas indeed specifically targeted one such institution immediately after possessing Carys Fletcher , and had sex with Matt Stevens in the club ' s bathroom , killing him . ( TV : " Day One " ) Typical Scottish pubs had a " dour , squat look " . ( PROSE : " The Highlanders " ) Pubs and bars were also to be found outside the United Kingdom , such as in the United States of America or on various other planet s . According to the Eleventh Doctor , English expats would open English pubs in places like Majorca as a way of " recreating a bit of home " . ( TV : " The God Complex " ) Activities in pubs . Often , a fight would break out among the drunks in pubs , ( COMIC : " Party Animals " , TV : " Combat " ) and the police would intervene . When , in 2007 , one such fight broke out , Gwen Cooper and Andy Davidson tried to break it up , Gwen receiving a head injury . ( TV : " Everything Changes " ) Sometimes , the members of a pub would join to make a sport s team . When Craig Owens revealed to the Eleventh Doctor that he belonged to a pub - league football team , the Doctor thought that he meant a drinking competition . ( TV : " The Lodger " ) Another activity not uncommon in a pub were games , such as pub quiz zes . On 24 April 2010 , the guests of the wedding of Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane played one such pub quiz at the Black Swan . ( PROSE : " Happy Endings " ) When Martha Jones needed to know who , between , Elvis and the Beatles , won more number one singles in order to save everyone on the SS " Pentallian " , her mother thought she was participating in a pub quiz . ( TV : " 42 " ) Naming of individual pubs . The word " fox " was often found in pub names . The Fourth Doctor , Harry Sullivan , Sarah Jane Smith and UNIT used the Fox Inn as a temporary headquarters in Scotland while dealing with the Zygon threat in Loch Ness . ( TV : " Terror of the Zygons " ) The Fancy Fox was a pub that Amy Pond , Rory Williams and the Eleventh Doctor used as a kind of base while on an adventure in the town of Foxton . ( PROSE : " The Way Through the Woods " ) In fact , many pub names seemed to be an adjective followed by an animal name . Other examples of this naming scheme included the Black Swan , ( PROSE : " " , " Not in My Back Yard " , " Happy Endings " ) the Fighting Cocks , ( PROSE : " The Little Things " ) the Golden Gopher ( TV : " Dead of Night " ) and the White Rabbit . ( AUDIO : " The Harvest " , et al . ) In popular culture . In the British soap opera " EastEnders " , one of the characters , Peggy Mitchell , owned a pub . In 2007 , when the show took advantage of the ghost phenomenon ( when Cybermen were mistaken for ghosts ) , a storyline featured Peggy being confronted in her pub by Den Watts , who had " come back from the grave " . She told him to get out of her pub , joking that the only spirits she served were gin , whisky and vodka . ( TV : " Army of Ghosts " ) Behind the scenes . Real life pubs have often served as filming locations .