Witney’s splendid £3m Blue Boar hotel, restaurant and pub was launched in traditional style last Thursday with a ‘first pint’ of beer poured by handpump at the gleaming new pewter and zinc bar (see picture) that overlooks the town’s historic market square.

I derived keen pleasure from the fact that the beer concerned was Wychwood Brewery’s Hobgoblin and that the drinker for whom it was poured was the Rev Toby Wright, team rector of St Mary the Virgin Church and a keen fan of real ale.

This seemed to me to be a special (though unintended) tribute to my old friend Chris Moss, the creator of the beer and himself a parson’s son. First produced in 1988 by the Witney-based brewery, Hobgoblin went on to fame around the world.

I know that brewer Chris, who sadly died in 2000, would have been flabbergasted had he known that bottles of his beer were destined one day to be ceremoniously handed over by a British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to an American President, Barack Obama.

Equally, he would have been hugely amused by his brewery’s response to the president’s remark that he would drink the beer chilled. This took the form of a T-shirt bearing the legend “What’s the matter Obama, afraid you might taste something?” — a playful variation on the beer’s well-known advertising slogan.

David Cameron, Witney’s MP, was one of the few local figures not present at the Blue Boar’s humdinger of a launch party — there being the small matter of the EU summit that has come to dominate the whole week’s news agenda. I feel fairly sure, though, with his keen interest in food and drink — not to say, too, in supporting local businesses — that his patronage of the place will not be too long off.

What he will find in the charge of general manager Stephanie Fisher can hardly fail to impress. Oakman Inns & Restaurants, which was founded four years ago by chief executive officer Peter Borg-Neal, has done a marvellous job in transforming the former Marlborough Hotel. Besides its eye-catching new public bar with a welcoming open fire, there is a 92-seat restaurant served by an open-to-view kitchen, a café overlooking a pretty courtyard and 20 handsome boutique-style bedrooms.

Anyone worried about the change of name can be reassured: the Blue Boar is a return to what the hotel was called in the 18th century. It became the Marlborough in the early years of the 19th.

Peter Borg-Neal, who has built a six-strong group of pubs and hotels from a base in Tring, is a likable and appealingly imaginative man. He says: “I like to think of all the travellers in the 18th century who were sitting at a table in the Blue Boar, drinking ale or wine and perhaps eating a hearty meal before their long, slow journey to, say, London or Bristol. They would choose that particular inn because of what it offered over and above its rivals. That ethos never changes.” Everyone I spoke to at the party agreed that it was going to prove a tremendous amenity for the town. These included the owners of ‘rival’ businesses, who felt that boosting Witney’s attraction to visitors would prove a benefit all round.

Coun Harry Eaglestone, the Mayor of Witney, declared the Blue Boar officially open and thanked Peter Borg-Neal and Oakman Inns for investing in the heart of Witney and transforming the historic coaching inn.

He said: “The hotel was always very popular and it is going to be all the more popular now it has been so magnificently restored.”