the times | Saturday May 28 2022 35
Comment
Experience teaches, by contrast,
that daytime drinking is precisely the
sort that is most helpful. Sir Walter
Scott in his journals says that “the
action of the intellect is accelerated
by the fever which a little wine
produces in the system”. And he was
surely right to say, “Men were put in
good humour when the good wine
did its good office; the jest, the song,
the speech had double effect; men
were happy for the night and friends
ever after because they had been so.”
Scott was talking about his own
times, when it was customary to
dine, and to drink, at four or five in
the afternoon and to finish by seven
or eight in the evening. We all know
that this is a sensible drinking
pattern and that if you sit up late
drinking it will destroy your sleep.
We advocates of booze are notpreaching excess (or not very often).
It’s when you have had too much or
stayed up too late that you start
picking fights and shouting about
“Tory scum”. But the fact that
drunks can sometimes be
bores does not mean that
teetotallers are not
usually worse bores.
Bores and bored. It
was widely reported
that alcohol
consumption had
gone up during the
achingly boring
months of lockdown,
as if this was
something to worry
about. On the contrary,
when we were shut up
indoors with nothing to do,
what possible reason could we
have to remain sober?
As Samuel Johnson wisely said
when some prig was denouncing the
poor, for numbing the horror of their
life with gin: “Life is a pill which
none of us can bear to swallow
without gilding.”AN Wilson’s most recent book is Lilibet:
The Girl Who Would be QueenLighten up and have a daytime drink or two
Fight back against anti-alcohol puritans and raise a glass to the tipsy example of Churchill, Gladstone, Turner and Byron
ALAMYeschew wine because they fear the
loss of control, whereas there are
many situations in life where a loss
of control is actually creative.
When I started in Fleet Street, the
best columnists in Britain
were not sitting at home
with their laptops, as they
do today, sipping
nothing stronger than
acqua minerale. They
were in smoke-filled
bars knocking back
triple whiskies and
lunching on a bottle
of claret per person.
They returned to their
offices, maybe a little
the worse for wear, but
having discussed the
subject of their articles with
colleagues and in a mysterious
way cleared their heads. The best
journalism has all been written when
a bit blotto.
Lunchtime or afternoon drinking
are now spoken of with especial
horror by the puritanical, and you
would be hard-pressed to find a
journalist or a publisher who drank
at lunchtime, as they always used
to do.veteran — military engagements
were only conceivable if the warriors
had been given “Dutch courage”. It
was still courage.
Nazi puritanism about alcohol
(and tobacco) was undoubtedly a
factor in weakening German morale
during the Second World War.
Spitfire pilots had shots of alcohol
and chain-smoked during the battles,
whereas the Luftwaffe were
forbidden to smoke or drink.
Whenever I feel tempted to believe
the anti-Churchillian revisionist view
of our wartime prime minister (and I
quite often feel so tempted), I
remember Hitler’s description of him
as “a superannuated drunkard
sustained by Jewish gold”.
Hoorah for Jewish gold, say I, and
if you had to choose between a
leader who slurped all day on
Pol Roger, whisky and brandy — yet
for all his faults, had his heart in the
right place — and a teetotal
vegetarian fanatic such as Hitler, the
choice is not a difficult one to make.
Nor is it an unfair example to
bring into this particular discussion.
Power maniacs — one thinks of
Widmerpool in Anthony Powell’s
A Dance to the Music of Time —W
hen Ian Blackford,
leader of the SNP in
Westminster,
denounced the
“drinking and
debauchery” at No 10, you got the
strong impression that he thought
the two were synonyms.
Likewise, when others complained
about the clinking of the wine bottles
being conveyed into Downing Street
in suitcases, you felt that puritanical
observers were gloating less over the
folly of these bored civil servants
than over the wickedness of having a
drink at all.
“You could see GIN BOTTLES
quite clearly in the picture,” said an
excited commentator on Radio Four
the other day, in tones that would
have been more suitable had you
been able to see lines of coke
or discarded syringes half-filled
with heroin.
I thought of Byron, swigging gin
all day as he composed Don Juan, or
Turner, half tight much of the time
as he painted, or Gladstone, who in
old age said he could not remember,
since growing up, any meal —
breakfast, lunch or dinner — at
which he had not consumed alcohol.
My theme today is not the rights
and wrongs of the parties scandal,
the impropriety of these boozy
“work events”. Nor is it my desire to
defend the dishonesty of Boris
Johnson at the dispatch box. We’ve
all heard enough of these matters to
last a lifetime. What disturbs me
about the reporting of the affair, and
the comments made, is the
nauseating prudery about drink.
The Psalmist praised wine that
maketh glad the heart. You do not
hear much about that on radio
bulletins, nor in the health pages of
the newspapers. In tones that are
always negative, they urge you to
measure the number of “units” you
consume.
Alcohol, which experience teaches
us jollifies everyday life and soothes
its pains, is spoken about consistently
as a danger. And with all the threats
— that too much beer or wine or gin
will shorten your life — there is
never any reflection on the much
more terrible effects, seen in every
dementia ward, of lengthening it.
So, let’s hear more of the merits of
booze and, on occasion, of
drunkenness itself. Tots of rum,
given to the men of the Royal Navy
as part of their daily ration, were
hugely increased on the eve of battle.
Similarly, in the army — talk to anyThe Velazquez painting The Triumph of Bacchus, also known as The Drinkers. Below, Winston Churchill and Sir Walter ScottDrunks can sometimes
be bores but teetotallers
are usually worse bores
saying to um... you know...
whatever her name is... she really is
an absolute hero for all she does,
including keeping quiet because
nobody likes a snitch, but also for
really rolling up her sleeves and
getting things done, especially when
the flush is broken... Ukraine!...... and talking of getting things
done, the prime minister has
rolled up his sleeves and got
Brexit done, although it does
seem to keep coming back up
the U-bend and bobbing about
and making a stink in
Northern Ireland, but forget
about Sinn Fein now
running the place because
like the PM always says, all
unions eventually come to
an end and it’s always him
who ends up paying the price
for it...
... and he knows what it’s
like to rely on handouts and the
kindness of strange party donors and
that is why we are sending everyone
money in the post... they said it
couldn’t be done, OK we said it
couldn’t be done, and now we are
doing it, so what does that tell you...... and you can tell it is good news
because Rishi has put his signature
on it, rather than hiding in
Ilfracombe pretending to not have a
signal... Ukraine!...
... and you might well ask why so
many otherwise intelligent decent
people are willing to defend this
carnival of cretinous characters and
the reason we do that is because we
are committed to the big Johnsonian
mission of um... er...
... look, I would just echo the
prime minister’s remarks at his press
conference when he said: “Now I’m
going to love you and leave you.”
Not for the first time... Ukraine!
It’s time we all
moved on and
followed the
PM in his big
mission to, er,
whatever...
L
ook, people are
understandably angry about
the poor behaviour of Sue
Gray but all of us as Tory
MPs have been told to say it
is time to move on because the prime
minister has said sorry he was
caught and lessons will be learnt,
including learning the lesson not to
put “wine o’clock ladz” in a calendar
invite, and the ministerial rules won’t
be broken again because the PM has
got rid of them, and he is very, very
humble which he showed when he
called the Labour leader “Sir Beer
Korma”, and people say the writing is
on the wall but actually that’s just
the rioja ...
... and look, none of this is going to
shift opinion, if you look at the polls
people have made up their minds
about us Tories and that’s not going
to change and um... no hang on,
forget the polls, there is only one poll
that matters and that’s the one at the
ballot box, no, not the one this month
where we made lots of losses but the
imaginary one in the future which
goes better, hopefully... Ukraine!...... and we now need to focus on
the big issues like the stalling
economy, hospital waiting lists, rising
crime and failing schools, and when
we find out who has been in
government for the past 12 years
they will face a proper Whitehall
disciplinary process, like downing a
tray of tequila shots and then going
on Wilf’s swing without chundering
everywhere like a catherine wheel...
... and we must of course, as the
prime minister did, pay tribute to
hardworking, loyal, patriotic civil
servants, apart from the ones sitting
at home on their Pelotons ordering
Ocado, and look, we are not going to
sweep this under the carpet, we’ve
got cleaners for that, and as I was
Matt Chorley
Listen to Matt Chorley
every Monday to Friday,
10am to 1pmAN Wilson
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The best