A new blight sweeping London – the craze for gin ... There were riots about the gin tax. Dr Lucy Worsley, The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain II, BBC 2014
How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test? Prince Philip to Scottish driving instructor 1995
Come on, can we not come to a wee arrangement, see? Tell you what, tell you what, I’ll start taking a dash of lime into my Buckfast … Rab C Nesbitt s1e3: City of Culture, Rab to doctor, BBC 1990
Where the hell do you think I’m going after a bit of news like that? I’m going to get blootered. ibid.
I’m not an alchy; alchies get pissed and lie about in gutters. ibid. Rab in the gutter
Rab: Oh this is it, Jamesie.
Jamesie: The place where they make Buckfast.
[both fall to knees and pray]: We worship you, oh great place of swelly. Rab C Nesbitt s4e3: Buckfast, BBC 1994
When your liver explodes and re-Artexes the ceiling of the local pub I tend to think it’s nature’s way of telling you to cut down. Rab C Nesbitt s4e7: More, Rab
The Binge! The Binge! Rab C Nesbitt s6e6: Binge, Rab to Jamesie & Gash, BBC 1997
The integrity of the binge is sacrosanct. ibid.
If we didn’t cross the line once in a while, where would we know where the line is? ibid.
I’m addicted to [Govan] cocktails. Rab C Nesbitt s7e2: Cocktails, BBC 1998
Let’s face it, any fool can get religion, but it’s a lot more fun getting bevvied, innit. Rab C Nesbitt s8e5: Bug s8e5, BBC 1999
A wee drop of this’ll put me in a nice state of Brahma before I go for my scratch-head. Goringa! ibid.
Which one of you lucky people am I going to embarrass the hell out of? I know your funny little ways, boy. I was sober once. Rab C Nesbitt s8e6: Trips, Rab with Jamesie on bus
We’re pissed. You’d have worked that out with your fully functioning scum detector. ibid.
Come on, do not fear our simply native ways – we’re post-modern but we’re very very happy. We sing. We dance. And we hunt for chips. We grow tumours and we die. ibid.
Don’t get upset – you’ll lose the benefit of the drink. ibid. Jamesie to Rab
Cotter, what are you doing here? You’re barred. Rab C Nesbitt: Clean, Christmas Special, Rab at AA, BBC 2008
Being fifty and vertical is going against Nature round here. Rab C Nesbitt s10e5: Role, BBC 2011
I’m never sober enough to tally up. John Sergeant Meets Rab C Nesbitt, Rab to Doctor, BBC 2013
I know what you’re thinking here. I am not, I am not an alchy. Alchies get pissed and lay about in gutters. ibid. Rab in gutter
I just take it to be sociable. ibid.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. George Best, attributions & variations
In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life. George Best
Tonight: Britain’s young drinkers – we test how much damage they are doing to themselves. And the shocking results. Tonight: Britain’s Young Drinkers, ITV 2014
Pre-loading is now standard practice among teens. ibid.
Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament – the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana – is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of solidarity has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It’s not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today’s Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn’t particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. Christopher Hitchens: Hitch-22: A Memoir
Hitch: ‘Making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,’ as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don’t drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don’t drink if you have the blues: it’s a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It’s not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can’t properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that’s an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed – as are the grape and the grain – to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It’s much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don’t know quite why this is true but it just is. Don’t ever be responsible for it. ibid.
Nancy Astor: Sir, you’re drunk.
Winston Churchill: Madam, you’re ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober. (Insults & Churchill & Drunk & Alcohol) apocryphal
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. Winston Churchill
I tend to drink too much. Why? I don’t know. I think it’s er simply boredom really. Peter Cook
It’s nothing to do with boredom or anything else. Actually it’s because I was found under a sea-shell in Dorset. My real mother threw me away in the seaweed. And I’ve always felt badly about it. And I started on Gripe Water, which I liked – you can’t get it now ... when I was forty-three, that’s what’s so upsetting about it. Peter Cook, Mavis Catches Up With 1989
I was into my third bottle a day. Richard Burton, interview BBC
It’s a human frailty. ibid.
I was simply a heavy drinker who really enjoyed it and went too far. ibid.
Tomorrow we may die, so let’s get drunk and make love. Lipstick aka Lois Long
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine? John Keats, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern 1820
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim. John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale stanza II
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest –
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, 1883
Go fetch to me a pint o’ wine,
An’ fill it in a silver tassie. Robert Burns
There’s naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion. Lord Byron, Don Juan
Let us have wine, and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after. ibid.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication. ibid.