We asked The Lord Gladstone's manager how yesterday's F*ck Pauline Hanson party went

Originally titled 'F*CK Pauline Hanson Day', Sydney pub The Lord Gladstone was forced to change the name of yesterday's anti-Pauline Hanson event to 'I Don't Like It - A Day Of Inclusiveness', following backlash from angry Hanson/One Nation supporters on Facebook. The themed party, which went ahead on Sunday, featured special drinks as well as the pub's own take on the famous and delicious Halal snack pack. F*CK Pauline Hanson Day came under heavy fire from extreme right-wing blogger and A-grade buffoon The Great Aussie Patriot (Shermon Burgess) in the lead up to the event. Burgess put out a call to his 23.000 pro-Pauline followers to target The Lord Gladstone, posting: "This is the pub that is allowing the Left Wing Anzac Hating, Aussie flag burning street thugs to hold their event called f*!k Pauline Hanson. Get on their page, leave them a 1 star rating and a bad write up for supporting traitors agans't [sic] Australia." Following the post, The Lord Gladstone copped a flurry of bad reviews and one-star ratings from tantrum-throwing One Nation supporters, claiming that they'd received poor service at the venue.

It didn't take long to see a magnificent return fire from those in favour of Sunday's event, with legendary (and 150,000 follower strong) Facebook page the Halal Snack Pack Appreciation Society offering their own advice to those wishing to counteract the hate, and pointing them in the direction of The Lord Gladstone's review section: "We will continue to focus on the important things moving forward (hoffing down sick snackies and showing love to our favourite vendors) but for now, please take 30 seconds to click the link below and show them some love." 5-star reviews and positive ratings rapidly flooded the Sydney pub's page and, at least for a moment, order was restored to the truly mental world of social media politics.

We had a quick chat with The Lord Gladstone's co-owner and all-round good dude Ben Johnson about yesterday's event. See what he had to say below.

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So I take it you must have some pretty strong feelings about Pauline and her policies to host an event like this?

In terms of her policies, I mean we feel just as strongly as your average Australian does about the exclusiveness of them. I mean, we are a pub, so no matter what my thoughts or my partners thoughts on politics are, we’d never do an event that was solely about pushing a political view.

This event came about because we saw the opportunity to do something topical that we knew a large portion of our demographic would support and find entertainment in. It was always meant to be a pisstake with political themes. Naming it “F*CK Pualine Hanson” originally was just to give it a bit of attitude. I mean, she’s a human being still. She just has a whack agenda when it comes to understanding other cultures etc.

And how did everything go yesterday? 

People were sitting around having a laugh and couple bevs. We sold out of HSPs by 4pm. The front bar had the footy on. It was a classic Sunday arvo pub session, it just had an extra air of excitement about it due to the build up

Did any pro-Pauline crew turn up to try and spoil the good vibes?

Absolutely no one.

You copped a few nasty reviews after The Great Aussie Patriot asked people to bag you guys out in your review section on Facebook, it must've been a nice feeling when the HSP Appreciation Society had their followers review positively?

It was pretty nice to see everyone jump in like that. Our chef is a mate of one of the admins on the page, so they made it clear they’d never use their influence, but I think a majority of their followers in the group were happy to shutdown the sort of people that were attempting to hijack the pages credibility. I just pity the poor bastards who genuinely read our reviews in months to come in order to make a decision about coming here…they will be deadset confused. It’s pretty wild in there with the sort of things people were saying on both sides, be it five stars or one star. One guy actually left a three star review haha, with the comment being along the lines of - “The food took too long to come out, also the service was average.” I knew he was with the first mob because his profile picture was an Aussie flag with a nu-metal style kangaroo deadlocking an emu with a tinny in his hand I thought - C'ome on man, you’re either 5 stars or 1…pick a goddamn side!'

Do you think you'll host politically charged events like these in the future, or was once enough for you guys?

Never say never mate...