Bradford drinkers discussing the war over a pint has helped bolster the profits of a major pubs chain.

Britain's second-biggest pubs owner Punch Taverns - which owns some 45 pubs across Bradford - today said world crises meant more people went to the pub - and helped it achieve better-than-expected first half profits of £55.6 million.

Operations director Andrew Thompson said: "There's no doubt about it, when a crisis like war, and in past years the petrol crisis, occur people do adjourn to the local to discuss the ways of the world.

"About three-quarters of our estate is in local pubs and they have been more resilient than the high street during the conflict in Iraq."

The company, which has acquired a pub every four weeks on average so far this year in Yorkshire, saw pre-tax profits at its portfolio of leased and tenanted pubs rise 17 per cent to £55.6 million from £47.6 million in the same period of 2002.

It was reporting its maiden interim results for the 28 weeks to March 1, after listing on the London Stock Exchange in May. Among the pubs it owns are the Railway, Birstall; the Ring O'Bells, Bolton Road, Bradford; the Black Bull Inn, Sutton-in-Craven, and the Old House at Home, Otley Road, Shipley.

Mr Thompson said concentrating on the local market was the key to improving its sales - turnover was up six per cent to £218 million.

"We look at each individual pub and see what its unexploited potential is," he said.

Analysts had been forecasting profits of about £52 million in the first half after Punch showed in January that it had avoided much of the downturn which plagued its high street rivals over the Christmas season. The group grew like-for-like sales in pubs owned for at least two years by five per cent in the first half.

The group also acquired two prestigious watering holes among a dozen pubs and hotels earlier this year. Punch bought 12 pubs including Steeton Hall, Keighley, and The Devonshire, at Grassington.