Liz Paton is a bar tender and one of the managers at the Old Gate in Hebden Bridge, birth place of HebTroCo.

“I know beer. I know beer so well in fact that I’ve lost count of the amount of times an older gent has told me ‘with knowledge like that you’d make a great wife’. My wife is into gin though, so my beer knowledge is wasted on her.

My first dalliance into the world of male trousers came when I was the wicket keeper for Stainland Under 13s cricket team. Over 13 and you have to play with your own gender so away went the trousers. I didn’t wear another pair of men’s kecks until I was 19 and the style for male cut jeans (now known as boyfriend cut) came into fashion. My dad’s old pair of 501s became mine.

I went to uni in Lincoln. I did a forensic degree, but it wasn’t forensics that I loved. I got a job at a brilliant Chinese restaurant and realised that the living are better conversationalists than the dead (mostly) and there is so much to learn about food and drink that I will never get bored of it.

When I started working at the Old Gate I began to immerse myself in being a local. Here I met brant and Ed. I got on well with brant because we both like to talk beer (and drink the strong stuff) at great length. Ed would drop in a lot wrapped in mud with groups of mountain bikers. To me they were two bike nerds with good banter but one fateful day, whilst they were sat on table 9, they got drunk and ate £20 worth of cheese (easiest up-sell I’ve ever made). My relationship with the guys still revolves around beer but I now know them as, my good friends, the Trousermen.

I once again own trousers made for men, only this time my dad wants to borrow mine.”