Wed 14th Jan 2015 - Actor Neil Morrissey launches new pub company with Punch site Actor Neil Morrissey launches new pub company with Punch site: Actor Neil Morrissey is launching a new pub company, MSW Pub Company, with a £400,000 refurbishment of a Punch Taverns site, the Plume of Feathers in Barlaston, Staffordshire. The move comes after Morrissey set up Neil Morrissey Real Ale Company in partnership with businessman Richard Slingsby last year. The company supplies Crystal Palace Football Club among others, producing three ales under licence – a fourth ale is to be produced to mark the re-opening of the Plume of Feathers. Slingsby told Propel: “Neil has a real passion for real ale and we saw that a natural extension of the real business would be to move into the pub business. An important part of this business is that Neil will be visible within the pub.” The company’s acronymn stands for Morrissey Slingsby Waddington, with James Waddington, the well-regarded founder of Inglenook Inns, overseeing the operational side of the pub business. The canal-side Plume of Feathers shut for extensive refurbishments on 5 January and will reopen on Friday 6 March. A Punch Taverns spokesman said: “We are delighted and really excited to be working with Neil and his team on the substantial investment at the Plume of Feathers and looking forward to opening for trade.” The actor previously went into business with celebrity chef Richard Fox setting up a company, Morrissey Fox Inns, which ran Ye Olde Punch Bowl Inn in Marton-cum-Grafton but which folded in 2009. Previously, the actor made failed investments in three famous leisure properties in Laugharne on the Carmarthenshire coast. Morrissey and his former business partner bought the bohemian country hotel Hurst House in 2001, and owned stakes in two one-time haunts of celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas – Brown’s Hotel and the New Three Mariners. Their company later went into liquidation.