News reaches us from blackleg our intrepid reporter, MattDC, that scenes like the above are no longer permissable at Glastonbury as THE MAN has BANNED brothers from selling plastic 2 litre bottles of their yellow nectar. We are not yet sure if this is due to the plastic making a right old mess or the fact that each bottle contains approximately 14 units of alcohol.

If you have joined our Pilton Boycott this year (and thank you all 850,000 of you* that have) but are still hankering after peary goodness, brothers is now available quite widely. Use their excellent ciderfinder to find yr nearest stockist!

UPDATE: This just in “Theres a dude selling rockingdadchairs! ACTUAL ROCKING DADCHAIRS! Omg”

*based on reports in previous years of a million people trying to get tickets on the first day

Here’s how to make a Caucasian when you want your customer to look at you with a mix of horror, pity, disbelief and contempt! As practiced by the horrible shifty barman at the London Excel Novotel.

AVOID THIS HOTEL FOR DRINKING. It’s SURROUNDED BY BARS, for a start, and the bar people are USELESS! If you’re with a large crowd who ‘have seats’, convince them that their seats are only making them weak. I failed in this task and my punishment was to drink this concoction.

HOWEVER - I recommend scamming a free breakfast at the Novotel as they have large hem-hem ‘decorative’ yellow peppers which are delicious when hungover, as well as large amounts of smoked salmon which you can pretty much scoff whole as they bring another bucketful instantly. HURRAH FOR CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION AND THE SOULLESS AUTOMATONS WHO PARADE THEIR FILTH IN THE DLR ZONE.

Anyway, here’s the recipe:

1. Get a pint glass and pour in two fingers of whole milk.
2. Slap a cocktail shaker on it and shake portentiously for about two minutes. Ignore look of puzzled fear from your customer. HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND HOW IT IS HERE.
3. Put the whole box-and-dice down and get a smallish glass. Half fill with ice water. YES WATER
4. Get a shot of vodka and pour it in.
5. Get a shot of kahlua and pour it into the watery vodka.
6. IMPORTANT NAY VITAL do NOT put the kahlua back on the shelf WITHOUT SPINNING IT THROUGH A MIND-BENDING PIROUETTE OF JUGGLING JIGGERY POKERY as in the film COCKTAIL starring TOM CRUISE. If you fail to include this step THE SHELF WILL BE ANGRY and take A TERRIBLE REVENGE.
7. Verrrry slowly drizzle the thick, lumpy milk that you’ve shaken within an inch of its life over the watery black mess, creating something that looks like a glass of curdled Guinness and also looks COMPLETELY UNDRINKABLE.
8. Slooooowly slide a cocktail straw or two into the mess so as not to disturb your artwork.

Nobody at the table could believe it was a white russian, and after I’d finished showing them the horror I stirred the damn thing up so it looked normal and tried it - it was both watery and unpleasantly strong, two things a white russian should never be. From now on I will call this version of the cocktail a Bernard Manning because it is the most offensive and yet self-satisfied Caucasian I have ever been presented with.

Here’s how to make a good white russian:

1. 1xVodka.
2. 1xKahlua.
3. Add between 3 and 5xMilk.
4. NO TOM CRUISE NO NO NO NO NO NO NO IT IS UNNECESSARY STOP THAT
5. If you want to get fancy, sprinkle a few chocolate shavings on top. Or serve it in a cup made of chocolate if you want to get obscenely fat. Both are perfectly acceptable.

*for now - keep an eye on FT for GREAT NEWS for all our listeners.

I didn’t actually approach the longed-for experience with the serious intention of ending up semi-conscious on the bathroom floor, but that is indeed where I found myself after a night swigging alcopops like it really was lemonade.

I can inform ms easton that a night on her beverage (at 4.2%, stronger that bacardi breezers and only just weaker than smirnoff ice) would almost certainly result in exactly the same outcome and, if my experiences are anything to go by, probably a much worse morning after…

I suppose it’s quite handy when your mum runs a social enterprise body though…

Oh, and there were never any snakes in Ireland anyway.

Admittedly products have been launched on flimsier grounds than this but the non-marketer in me is screaming at this particular straw man, “Just take the sodding tablets without it you gimp!”. The subset of consumers who are too precious to take capsules without water and yet unembarrassed enough to pour purple powder onto their tongues in semi-public is surely tiny. Or perhaps there is something darker at work…

Because as soon as I actually TRIED Lemsip Direct I realised their game: IT IS SPACE DUST. Space dust, the fabled pops-on-your-tongue sweet that was banned** from playgrounds in the 80s, creating an unslakable yearning in a generation of kids who are now weary 30something commuters buying cold and flu remedies. Only now it contains an actual drug too. Gotcha, Lemsip!

*NB the not-needing-water claim is a total lie - you will need water anyway as Lemsip Direct tastes disgusting.

**This is probably an urban myth.

23rd December ‘07

After 3 days fogbound, we found ourselves under clear skies in open sea. The navigator swiftly fixed our position and discovered we had been drifting South the whole time while enshrouded. Knowing of a nearby harbour town, we steered for land.

We made port and immediately sought a suitable hostelry. This was a civilised town and we soon came across an ale-house selling the brews of Messrs. Fuller, Smith and Turner (and incorporating those of Mr. G. Gale). In these comfortable surroundings, we settled with a few welcome pints of HSB to plan our onward journey. It was amid this discussion that the bos’n suddenly leaped to his feet with alarm and pointed across the room. Our eyes followed his trembling finger until alighting on what had turned him so pale.

Behind the bar were several bags of Seabrooks crisps.

We turned to the navigator who assured us without reservation that our latitude was 50°51′04 N. This fellow, his head full of star charts and arithmetic, knew little of the ways of snacks and expressed some bewilderment at our shock. The bos’n and I know our crisps, however and we were keenly aware how rare it is to sight this species so far from the towns and cities of the North.

The bos’n, fearing the sighting was a terrible omen, insisted we remain ashore for the next few days. He’s a superstitious man but the sight of those distinctive white packets where honest bags of Kettle Chips ought to be had shaken my nerves. We’ll set sail again on the 27th.

This does not mean that a beers name cannot be witty. And at the recent Hackney Pig’s Ear Beer festival it was all agreed that the Pitfield Brewery’s “Night On Mare Street II” lived in the acceptably amusing beer name category. The beer festival took place in Ocean on Mare Street - so you see what they did with their name. Its a play on the popular film sequence - including the sequels*, BUT THE LOLL’s don’t stop there. Because the beer itself is a whopping 14.2% Thus a potential nightmare in bottle / draught form. 14.2% starts going beyond barley wine and into a hithertoo unappreciated area of bouze, namely the barley FORTIFIED wine.

We got a half and shared it around. It was gorgeous. Like a thinner, maltier glass of port. Sweet, strong and wonderful. Possibly not designed to be drunk in massive volumes. But I liked it so much I bought a couple of bottles, and Steve bought some of the previous years offering Night On Mare Street I, which was 14%. Hooray for Pitfield brewery! which I had always assumed, with a name that evokes FIELDS and PITS was somewhere in the North. Or at least in a traditional mining community. I had not realised it was names after Pitfield Street in Hoxton, where it was a back room brewery of an off-licence until recently. Pitfield Brewery is now based just outside Colchester, but this was originally a London Brewery. I have always liked their beers, and didn’t know that it was originally an Islington brewery. Go figure! And I am looking forward to a double bill of Night On Mare Street and its sequel some time over Christmas. And look forward to Night On Mare Street III: Beer Warriors next year. (If just to see if the beers follow the film sequence of the odd numbered ones being the best).

*Night On Mare Street was made by them the previous year.

The game involves picking symbols on an alethiometer, causing the compass to point to another symbol, which determines your category. This may or may not have some complicated algorithm behind it, to our unknowing eyes it appears to pick the categories completely at random which means that the process of picking 3 symbols to get to each question quickly becomes 1xBIG CHORE as you have to go though them all to get to the cash game. This kind of does mirror something in the film (SPOILER AHOY) where they fairly quickly ignore which symbols Lyra is picking as she just dives into the swirly ale-coloured depths of the compass to pull up details of the next level objective the answer she needs.

The gradient of question difficulty is annoying too - very easy questions for ages, which is tedious, then suddenly hard ones just as you’re about to hit the cash game, with none of the gradual ramping up of challenge you want. Gimmicks include a “daemon game” i.e. a skill test and a “Truth button”, which answers the question for you. (Sorry Sarah for my over-eagerness in using this). “Quiz users have rarely if ever been offered such a rich casket of wonders.” - CAMRA News.