So it seems the former BrewDog CEO still doesn't know when to wind his neck in...
Way back in 2011 I invested a small but not insignificant amount in a scrappy, up-and-coming Scottish craft brewery called BrewDog.
Things went well for a time, and the brand grew. They opened some bars. A lot of bars, in fact. They made some good beers. And a few great beers. And latterly a lot of mediocre beers.
COVID and the subsequent cost of living crisis hit it hard, and in early 2026 it finally imploded under the weight of debts that the former CEO and all-round egomaniac James Watt saddled it with1 as part of his quest for expansion at all costs in search of FMCG unicorn valuations.
The brand got sold off to a US concern and James Watt promptly decided to set up a new brewery called "Second Best" and offer equity for free to former BrewDog shareholders.
So far, so par for his particular course...
A bit of background / perspective
Full disclosure: I signed up for the offer of equity in Second Best.
I held (well, technically I think I still hold, albeit with no value attached to them while the business is wound up) 700 or 800 BrewDog shares, and whilst I hadn't invested anything I couldn't afford to lose, I was keen on the idea of a vague possibility of being able to salvage a few quid back at some point, particularly if it was at James Watt's (nominal) expense.
It was a no-brainer really - if it worked out, the possibility of actual money! If it didn't? Nothing really.
Apparently around 43,000 other former BrewDog shareholders have signed up too.
I can't attest to their motives — perhaps they are stalwart JW aficionados and drinkers of his Kool-Aid flavoured alco-pop, or maybe, like me, they were intrigued by even the vague possibility of making a few bob back on their BrewDog losses.
In any event, it's notable that he got such significant interest in what he was presenting as a brand new brewery with a tight focus on producing a small number of high-quality beers.
A note on implied endorsement
I want to make it clear that my signing up was in no way an endorsement of James Watt as a businessman, or as a human being.
Were I the kind of person to resort to base language and name calling, I would say that James Watt is an irredeemable, hubristic, attention-seeking egomaniac, should by now be considered utterly poisonous to any brand he is associated with, and would serve the world better by just shutting up and going far, far away to live off-grid at the bottom of a festering cattle dung silo2 for the rest of his natural life.
But I'm not that kind of person, so you'll just have to take the phrase "I do not think kindly of him" and imagine something more robust yourself.
Once more unto the hubris
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when on 15 July 2026 I happened to see an Instagram post announcing that he had made an offer to buy back BrewDog from the new owners, Tilray Brands.
What the what now?!?
Yep. He's trying to buy the brand back.
Apparently the new brewery (with its supposed tight focus on a small range and high quality) would be part of BrewDog if successful, but still... what the actual ****?!?
Whilst that came as a bit of a surprise to me, the part that really got my goat was the way that he qualified that bid:
We have formally submitted our offer to buy BrewDog.
The offer was made by Second Best and sent to Tilray Brands.
43,000 Equity Punks have already joined the bid.
If we succeed, every registered punk gets their BrewDog equity back, for free.
We’d also restore the Real Living Wage, bring back the team’s equity, and put the community back at the heart of the business.
The punks and the crew built this company and BrewDog deserves to belong to them once more.
Equity Punks, you backed me once. This time, I’m backing you.
Hopefully, we can bring BrewDog home.
Read that third line again.
43,000 Equity Punks have already joined the bid.
No, we ****ing haven't!
I, specifically, very much have not joined that bid.
I joined the roll call for a new brand and a new brewery, not a buy-back of the last one that he torpedoed with his ego!
One-man brand kryptonite
As mentioned above, I am not one of JW's true believers.
In fact, I truly believe that at this point he is poisonous and corrosive for any brand he goes near.
So yes, my signing up for Second Best shares was and is opportunistic and selfish, and yes, I would rather see the BrewDog brand either rehabilitated by Tilray or quietly escorted out into a field and put out of its misery than having its decaying corpse exhumed and re-animated by an unrelenting, egomaniacal corporate necromancer.
But most of all, I do not want me signing up for one thing to be parlayed into something else entirely.
That is what is known in the trade as a "bait and switch".
Let's be clear here - James bloody Watt didn't just invite people to a new venture. He essentially used our email sign-ups as a leverage-chip to wave in front of Tilray. It’s classic "if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product" — except here, we're the prop in his one-man stage show.
Fundamentally I do not want to be misrepresented as having "joined the bid", and I have emailed Second Best to express my dissatisfaction with both their direction and their framing.
And I guess I also want him to JUST SHUT UP AND GO AWAY ALREADY.
I suppose I will have to get used to disappointment, and wait another 15 years to see if he can learn to stop at "successful, profitable business with good products" rather than pursuing numerous different moonshots simultaneously, hopefully in time for me to cash in and retire on the proceeds.
I think I'll still keep contributing to my pension though. You know, just in case...
Footnotes
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Not before he (and co-founder Martin Dickie, the brewing talent behind the product) had achieved a personal pay day of a reported £50m, mind you. ↩
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Instead, he's married someone off that Made in Chelsea "posh kids as scripted-reality TV" drivel, swans about in a London penthouse, is simultaneously building an influencer marketing business (which maybe seems to have gone a bit quiet of late), and is more than happy to make his opinions on any given topic a matter of public record. ↩