Drink - Victoria Moore on the drinking classes
Parlour games are so much the preserve of the British that we rarely ever grow out of them. They just get adapted to suit any situation, transforming everything from the dullest of mundanities to the most hair- raising disaster into the sort of silly game that might easily find a prime-time slot on Radio 2 presided over by Nicholas Parsons.
We invent them all the time. "I am ordering you a Chambers dictionary," I e-mailed starchily to a colleague the other day. "Have asked my seccy to order you Standard English Grade Revision notes," he retorted with double one-upmanship. "Have changed dictionary order to Debrett's Guide to Modern Manners and Etiquette," I steamed, and so the exchange continued, thick with insults, until it threatened to cross that slender line between fair game and too personal and we had to desist.
My latest love and I, having spent Christmas playing Sensations (describing people as a colour, flavour, fast-food snack and so on until the assembled company can guess their identity) are now having a row of our own. We have no inclination to spare each other's feelings. "You," he glares, "are the water mixed with wine you give to small children who have acquired neither the taste nor the savoir-faire to deal with anything very advanced."
I return that, though no doubt he would like to be a Tetley's pulled in a traditional Leeds pub into a pint jug, he is in fact a white wine spritzer: slightly girly, unreconstructed and utterly repellent.
"You are a glass of pub wine," he responds, cruelly. "Arriviste, out of place and not as good as you should be."
At this point the argument collapses, my latest love being too pleased with his last comment to do anything but smirk. But we turn to matching famous people to the drinks they would transmogrify into if Bacchus waved his cloven hoof. Inevitably, they are less glamorous than anything one would choose to promote their image when ordering at the bar.
Tony Blair, we decide, is a lager shandy. Not only that, but being something of a shiny, all-loving package, he is a Schweppes can of shandy (alcohol content very low). You'd be really fed up if someone brought cans of shandy to your party, but think it was great come midnight when the only other alcohol around was a foul selection of spirits that had been lingering in the cupboard for much too long.
For a moment we wonder whether Jeremy Paxman, beloved by housewives up and down the country (come on, you didn't think your wife was watching Newsnight because of her passion for current affairs, did you?) might be a bottle of Gordon's London gin. But that does him a disservice. We conclude that, for his irascibility and feistiness he is most definitely a single malt. The question is which. Paxman is either loved or hated (something one feels he might be rather pleased about), immensely popular nevertheless and not for the faint-hearted. Which makes him Laphroaig, no ice, no water.
Brad Pitt, meanwhile, would definitely be a blend. The golden boy looks good, but just a little bit disappointing when you get close up. Bette Midler is Asti Spumante: fizzy, loud and slightly lacking in class. Posh Spice is diet, caffeine-free coke. You know, the one that comes in a glitzy gold can and has had so much taken out of it you wonder what the point of it is. Bill Clinton is a quintessentially American Gibson (a Martini with a cocktail onion): very powerful, kinda glamorous but you can't imagine ever having the inclination to taste it.
Damien Hirst would probably be meths: very pungent, quite shocking and all in all an acquired taste appreciated only by alcoholics (or artoholics), though perhaps that's a cheap jibe. We could go on for ever, but last orders are being called. I ask for a Campari and orange. "Slightly exotic, very sharp, aesthetically pleasing?" queries my latest love. "In your dreams."
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