Tales of tipples past

When I was 17, our scout troop went on a camping trip around the area where the borders of Austria, Yugoslavia (as it still was) and Italy meet. In Austria, we were staying near a city called Villach (pronounced Feel-ack). The local beer was Villacher Bier, which in itself we found mildly amusing because out loud it sounded to us a bit like 'feel like a beer'. About all I can remember is that it was a golden-coloured beer.

One evening, we were sitting in a beer garden and, having studied German briefly, I was instructing our group how to order beer in German ("Ein Bier bitte ... zwei Biere bitte ... drei Biere bitte ..." and so on). Some of the other drinkers were laughing at us when a dog walked in. It wandered hopefully from table to table and was completely ignored until it came to us; we of course patted and made a fuss of it. The dog with tail wagging furiously was loving every second of all this unaccustomed attention, but from the neighbouring table I heard just one word: "Englisch!"

••••♦••••

The Scarisbrick Hotel

In the late 1970s, at a time of petrol shortage, I had been to a party on the other side of Southport and in the early hours was cycling home on a bike borrowed from my brother. As I approached Lord Street, the main shopping street in Southport, it began to sleet and the bicycle chain broke. I managed to fix it, but it broke again a few minutes later.

Lord Street has a long canopy for most of its length so I was sheltered from the worst of the weather for part of the journey home, but it was going to be a long walk, until I had an idea, the kind that usually only occurs to you after a few pints. Treating the bike like a kid's scooter with one foot on a pedal and the other pushing on the ground, I was getting quite a good speed up.

Halfway along Lord Street is the Scarisbrick Hotel, something of a local landmark, and outside was standing a young policewoman. As I approached, she held up her hand to stop me and said: "I know there's a petrol shortage. Are you economising on bicycle oil?"

••••♦••••

A few years later, I'd had several pints in the Park Hotel, a pub in Birkdale, and then went to a wine bar called the Grape Escape on Lord Street (now Waterstones book shop). A young lady helped me dispose of a couple of bottles of wine and promptly disappeared when the last one ran out, after which the bar shut anyway so it was time to go home.

As I started out, I realised I was going down a one-way street the wrong way so I carefully turned around and went a longer way home to avoid breaking any more one-way street regulations.

When I woke up the next morning, I remembered all of this - including the fact that I hadn't been driving: I'd been on foot all evening.

Corn flakes, treason and dogs

Three unexpected stories from the world of beer that I've come across recently.

 

Seven Bro7hers Brewery in Salford has teamed up with cereal giant Kelloggs to produce a beer out of unused corn flakes. The flakes will be completely safe for human consumption, being those that are too big, too small, broken or overcooked. The first beer to use the flakes will be called Throw Away IPA with a strength of 5%. The limited edition beer will use the flakes to replace some of the wheat grain in the mix. Alison Watson from the brewery said: "Kellogg's recognises that it has an important role to play in reducing food waste, and that includes finding uses for edible food that doesn't make it into the cereal box. We plan to create three beers, including a hoppy IPA which will be launched this month."

I had to check the date wasn't 1st April for the next one. Scottish brewery BrewDog is introducing Subwoofer IPA, which they say is the first beer produced just for dogs. The idea was developed by the Brewdog team in Liverpool, who reported that the prototype was popular with local dog lovers. Subwoofer is made with wort from the brewery, the same malted barley and hot water that are used in their human IPAs. There were three rounds of tasting trials with 25 dogs before the team was satisfied with the product. The beer is hop-free and not carbonated; it is also alcohol-free, which is just as well, seeing that most dogs are under 18.

Newby Wyke of Grantham is brewing a beer in response the government's draft Brexit declaration: cheekily called 'Treason', it is a 4.2% ale. They've produced this beer before in relation to government ministers from all three major parties; they must like taking pot shots at any senior politicians who poke their heads above the parapet.

Brewer Robert March said: "One landlady said to me politicians and beer do not mix, but I replied they raise the beer taxes, so we can take the mickey. With what is going on with Brexit, I thought we should bring it back."

Losing your bottle

In a couple of TV dramas recently, I've noticed that when the characters drink beer at home, they drink out of bottles. While I know some people do this in real life, I don't see it that frequently. This may be partly attributable to the kind of pubs I tend to drink in, but I do also go into local micropubs that offer a good choice of bottles in addition to draught beer and I've noticed that most bottled beer drinkers will opt for a glass. This may be because they are drinking a premium product and want to enjoy it at its best, while the direct-from-bottle drinkers are more likely to be swigging bog standard foreign beers such as San Miguel.

Drinking out the bottle is a much less satisfying experience than drinking the same bottled beer out of a glass. The beer fizzes up in your mouth and in your stomach, with a consequence that you cannot fully taste the flavour and you become bloated more quickly. It can also develop a huge head in the bottle. I expect that dramas like to depict people drinking out of bottles because it looks more rugged or some such nonsense, but bottles were not designed to be drunk out of. On the few occasions when I drink bottled beer at home, I use a glass and find that guests always do as well.

There is also the question of hygiene. Bottled beers can be stored in insecure premises in breweries, warehouses, pub cellars or supermarket storerooms. These types of areas are not kept clean to a food safety standard and there is the real chance of rats, mice, cockroaches or other vermin crawling over crates, urinating and defecating as they go. Some drinkers then put these bottles straight into their mouths. Unless there is some visible dirt on bottles, they are not normally cleaned, and even when they are, it would be quickly for appearance rather than thoroughly for hygiene.

Still, we mustn't be too harsh on the bottle drinkers: if they poured their beer out and supped it from a glass, they might find they're not actually that keen on the flavour.

A true story

Not the dream woman!

I had a strange dream last night. A woman was holding up a Higsons "Famous Old Higsonians" beer mat with a sign that said: "Will exchange for sex."

This puzzled me for a while.

Then the truth dawned on me: until I'd had that dream, I had no idea that I had such an unrequited, deep-seated and subliminal desire to own Old Higsonian beer mats.

Real ale in Southport - 1985 and now

While sorting out some books in preparation for a house move, I came across a 'Merseyside Guide To Real Ale', published in 1985, a booklet I'd completely forgotten about. It cost 50p (£1.53 now, so it was quite a bargain) and is a fairly slim volume which could easily slip into a coat pocket. As was usual in those days, the pub descriptions were rather sketchy, but I think it's safe to assume, in an age when beer choices rarely changed in pubs, that the beer situation was accurately described. This was published four years before the Beer Orders which turned the pub world in its head.

Looking at Southport, where I lived then as now, there were 25 pubs, bars, clubs and hotels listed as serving real ale. There were quite a few more non-real ale pubs, of course. In contrast, off the top of my head I have counted 41 outlets that currently serve real ale in the same area, and there may be one or two others that have slipped my mind.

Most of the beers sold in pubs were from the brewery that owned them and, as the chart shows, most pubs had only one or two real ales on. Nowhere had more than four real ales, and only one real cider was listed (Bulmers Traditional). In contrast, serving four or more real ales is quite commonplace in the town nowadays, with a few venues hitting the eight to eleven range. Real cider is still fairly uncommon in Southport, but at least we can do better than just one.

Unusual beers for the time in this area included:

• McEwans 70/-
• McEwans 80/-
• Youngers No. 3
• Boddingtons Bitter
• Marstons Pedigree
• Ruddles County
• Wilsons Original Bitter

All the rest were standard house beers from Allied Breweries, Bass, Burtonwood, Whitbread, and Matthew Brown/Theakstons. I know there was a couple of Greenall Whitley houses but I presume none sold real ale. As variety goes, this all looks fairly tame today, even the comparatively 'unusual' choices, although it's worth noting that in 1985, Pedigree, County and Boddingtons were much more highly rated than they are now.

It strikes me that, in all the doom and gloom over pub closures - and some venues listed in this guide have since been lost - we may forget that overall the situation is a lot healthier in terms of choices of beers and places to drink them than ever before, largely due to the numbers of micro-breweries and the rise of micropubs and other bars serving real ale.

I am not blasé about losing traditional pubs, and I know that some people consider the market is over-saturated with breweries and micropubs that may not survive in the long term, but despite all that, I can simply say that I much prefer to drink in today's Southport than that of 1985.

The fest that never was

This beer glass is one of the more interesting ones in what I laughingly call my collection. I picked it up a long time ago at another festival, possibly Bury. There's nothing special about the glass itself: it's just a standard nonic with an attractive logo for the Stockport Beer Festival of 1988, exactly thirty years ago.

Except it's not: this festival never took place. Among the organisers, there was apparently a conversation along the lines of:
"Did you apply for the licence?"
"No, I thought you were doing that."
Oh dear!

By the time they realised they had no licence for the event, it was too late. Unfortunately it was also too late to cancel the order for the glasses, and I picked up one for the novelty of having a glass for the beer festival that never was.

I went to the Stockport beer festival a couple of times a good few years ago; it was held in Stockport Town Hall in those days. On the last occasion, we caught the train from Southport and rolled up for the Saturday afternoon session. Unfortunately, they had almost run out of beer so we strolled along to a pub underneath the viaduct which you can see in stylised form on the glass. The pub was the Crown where, as I recall, we had a really good afternoon before going home happy. Checking on What Pub, the Crown still looks like a great pub.

In case you're wondering, although you probably weren't, it's not made of white glass; 
I put paper inside to show the design more clearly.

Everyone's A Critic

The critics (Bella, left, and Lucy)

I was dog-minding last weekend with my brother's two young Beagles, Bella and Lucy. Before leaving the house to play at the Bothy Folk Club, I decided to run through the songs I planned to sing, at which point the pair of them ran into the kitchen, complaining loudly. One came back and pawed my leg with a pleading look on her face, before dashing back to the kitchen where they both stayed until I had put the guitar down.

Perhaps they were offended because one of the songs was by Cat Stevens. Or as a friend suggested, I sang the wrong Cat Stevens song: they'd have preferred "I Love My Dog".

Two Nation Stories

Me - before the beer.

After the big march in London last Saturday 12 May, my friend Geoff, with whom I have collaborated on some songs, and I went to the Moon Under Water in Leicester Square. The beers were all right, and I had a couple brewed in the East End that I doubt I'll see in Merseyside. The prices, around £3.55 a pint, although cheap in London, were dear by Southport standards - and I don't mean Southport Wetherspoons where the normal price is £2.15 a pint.

I later met my niece in the Rocket in Euston where I was paying £4.40 a pint. Again, the beers were unfamiliar and were okay, if slightly lacking in life.

Breaking my journey home at Wigan, I went into Wigan Central, a bar under the railway arches, and was charged £2.95 for a much better-kept pint of real ale served by a much friendlier barmaid. I was recognised by Zoe who knew me from the Wigan beer festival, and I saw several other familiar female faces: it was the hen night of the Central's bar manager, Jo Whalley, whom I also know from the beerfest. All were dressed to the nines with hats and fascinators (see - I know sartorial terminology). Unfortunately, I had to dash for my train and so couldn't stay to chat.

Reaching Southport, I called in for the second half of the Bothy Folk Club cèilidh, where two good Southport beers (Golden Sands and Monument) were on sale at £2.50 a pint. After the event had officially finished, I asked for a half, thinking I didn't want to detain them. "You, a half?" he said chuckling incredulously, and proceeded to pour me a pint. This happened twice: it's good to be known.

Thank goodness I don't live in London.

That T-shirt looks pink in the photo. It was bright red when I bought it.

Getting back to normal

I've been out of the game for most of the last month with a rather nasty chest infection. It's difficult to keep a music and real ale blog going when you're more or less housebound. Writing my weekly CAMRA column for the local paper hasn't been easy either. The fact that my voice had degenerated into a croak meant that practising songs on my guitar wasn't an option to pass the time. Although the infection has been dealt with by antibiotics, my voice - my singing voice particularly - has yet to return fully. I have spent a lot of the time catching up on all the TV programmes I'd been recording, but this palls after a while. It's quite surprising how much Taggart is shown each week.

The thought has crossed my mind that I've had a mere three weeks of this, while for some people this is their life. I've visited housebound people in the past when I worked for the DSS, and I did what I could within the job's constraints, but the forbearance most of them showed puts my few weeks of confinement into perspective - and not in a way that flatters me!

I'm now pub-going again. Gail, the licensee of my local, the Guest House, has welcomed me back, as have the staff, and it's nice to have that feeling of belonging to a pub. She says that I can resume my monthly gigs there as soon as I can sing again. And there's a point: your voice is something you just take for granted. Most of us don't think about it: it's just there - until it isn't. Still, I'm on the mend, and I hope not to get another chest infection like this one for some time to come.

The good news is that the Phoenix Brewery May Fly was definitely in good nick last night.

Study shows 'hair of the dog' works

Not available on prescription

In the Woody Allen film Sleeper, a health food shop owner is cryogenically frozen. After he is revived 200 years later, his doctors have this conversation:

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or ... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy ... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible!

In an example of life imitating art, researchers at the University of Greenwich have discovered that two pints of beer are better at relieving pain than painkillers such as paracetamol. If your blood alcohol content is raised to around 0.08%, your pain theshold is raised slightly, thus noticeably reducing the intensity of the pain.

According to the researchers, "Findings suggest that alcohol is an effective analgesic that delivers clinically-relevant reductions in ratings of pain intensity, which could explain alcohol misuse in those with persistent pain, despite its potential consequences for long-term health."

Predictably, the report on these findings in The Independent was obliged to conclude with a warning about the health risks of excessive consumption of alcohol, along with a reminder that the official recommended safe limit is 14 units. If it were discovered that, say, beefburgers had certain health benefits, would they end every item with a warning that excessive consumption of them could lead to obesity and other health problems? I seriously doubt it, but - tediously - they insist on doing it every time alcohol is mentioned.

Anyway, it's now official: hair of the dog works at a level of about two pints. Best not exceed the dose or, tragically, you might have to apply the cure again the following day.

A packet of paracetamols costs around a tenth of the price of two pints but won't work as well, and are undeniably less enjoyable to take. You pays your money ...

Quaffing All Over The World

I'm posting this information as a service for beer drinkers planning to go abroad. Deutsche Bank has compiled a chart showing how much it costs in 2017 to buy either a pint or a half litre of beer in a local pub in an expat area of the city concerned.

The dearest is Oslo at $9.90 (£7.59), London is $6.40 (£4.90) and the cheapest listed is Prague at $1.30 (£1.00). I find it interesting that in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, both capital cities of countries with large Muslim populations (indeed, Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country), the prices in sterling work out at £3.15 and £3.22 respectively - considerably less than London.

A Peerless review

I wrote on 20 March about the Corridor, a real ale café bar on Lord Street, Southport. My article was also printed in the Southport Visiter's CAMRA column, which the editor decided to post on Facebook. Underneath were a few dismissive comments, such as it wasn't very informative and how could I write a review of the place without trying the food? I wondered whether to ignore it, but decided that as I'm not a journalist, I'd reply to the criticisms. I explained, among other things, that it was the Campaign for Real Ale column, not a restaurant review; my main priority was the drinks. The critics shut up, and the column achieved quite a pleasing number of Facebook 'likes'.

I popped in again last night and discovered a beer I hadn't had before: Peerless Knee Buckler IPA (5.2%). I usually find I like Peerless beers; this one was a very drinkable golden-coloured beer with a certain hop bitterness and citrus flavours. My friend Alan and I both decided to stick with it; it apparently won Gold in the SIBA North beer competition in October 2014 in the Strong Bitters category.

While I was talking to the licensee, he told me that several people had called into the Corridor as a result of my column in the Visiter, which I was particularly pleased about: stuff the on-line whingers - at least someone's taking notice of my scribblings.

You've been warned!

30th Wigan Beer Festival

The Wigan pieman celebrates his 30th

I returned to Southport yesterday after working for two days at the 30th Wigan Beer Festival. My first task was on the judging panel to help choose the beers of the festival, and then I was mainly on the doors. As always, I enjoyed my time volunteering there.

The funny thing about working at a beer festival is that you seem to end up drinking rather less than you might expect, considering the amount of time you're in there, mainly because the beer is an adjunct to the task you've been assigned.

How busy you are varies, sometimes with extreme peaks and troughs. On the admissions door at Wigan, we had periods of relative quiet punctuated by frantic activity each time the bus came in from Wigan town centre. As the festival venue, a sports hall, is more than a mile from Wigan town centre, the local bus preservation trust provides a free bus service to and from the festival (voluntary donations are encouraged towards their costs).

I think I've commented before that Wigan seems to attract a more diverse range of drinkers than most festivals I've been to, with groups of young women coming in without males in tow, which I've found to be less common elsewhere. Okay, the gender balance is still skewed towards men, but it's still noticeably different. Contrary to some people's expectations, they don't all gravitate towards the cider and perry bar. The DW Stadium is just across the road, so we had a large number of rugby fans, male and female, both before and after the match to add to the mix.

I didn't get to try very many beers, but of those I did try, I found that Waimea, a 5.2% single hop IPA from Manchester's Blackjack Brewery particularly suited me. I don't know how it's pronounced, but my guess is 'why me'.

I find the Wigan festival is a very friendly one, both the other volunteers and the public. Looking forward to next year already.

Old Roan memories

The Old Roan (picture borrowed
from the petition set up to save it)

Unusually, I was driving towards Liverpool last Thursday (I almost always go by rail nowadays) via Aintree. I used to drive this route every day for 13 years when I worked in Norris Green, Liverpool 11, until I transferred to Southport in 1993. I was expecting changes, and there were certainly plenty. However, what I wasn't expecting to see that the Old Roan pub was boarded up. Checking on-line later, I saw that it has been closed for 3 or 4 years and is up for sale for conversion to retail premises. There was an unsuccessful petition (now closed) to Sefton Council Licensing Unit to allow the pub to reopen.

This pub was something of a highly visible landmark, giving its name to the surrounding area and to the nearby railway station;  I don't recall it ever selling real ale. However, when I worked in Norris Green, I'd sometimes offer Wally Warren, the deputy manager, a lift if we were leaving work at the same time - we both tended to work late; he lived near the pub and it saved him a slow bus trip. Sometimes he'd offer to buy me a pint, and in we'd go. I was the union rep in the office, but no cosy deals were stitched up there.

For a while, we had a manager who seemed to have a skill in getting on everyone's nerves. After he'd been moved on, Wally told me that he'd learnt about our occasional drinks and asked, "Is it fruitful?" Wally replied that I didn't let slip anything that I shouldn't, and neither did he as a member of management; he added that the boss never trusted him again.

In negotiations, Wally and I crossed swords on several occasions, but it wasn't personal. He was an old-school manager with integrity, even if he could be a bit grumpy on occasions; overall the staff liked him and tended to tolerate his little foibles with a knowing smile. I learnt a few years ago that he'd died; if I'd known I'd have gone to his funeral.

As I drove past the Old Roan, all these thoughts came back to me and, although the beer wasn't up to much, I look back on those pints in that pub with fondness and, I'd go as far to say, friendship.

One of these occasions was the last time I drank a pint of keg lager. Wally bought it for me in error and offered to replace it when he realised his mistake, but I just accepted it. After all, it wasn't as though the Old Roan's bitter was much better.

Cheers, Wally!

A star is imported

I see that Kingfisher Beer Europe intends to import Bintang into the UK. Bintang is an Indonesian beer, a Pilsner with a strength of 4.7%. Normally I'd say: "So what?"

My father was an expatriate worker in the cigarette industry, and his work took him to many countries, a few of which I visited when I was a child and a student. One of these countries was Indonesia. We lived in a provincial city called Semarang in central Java. The most popular beer available everywhere was Bintang, brewed by a local subsidiary of the Heineken group, and the bottles prominently feature the Heineken star, after which the beer is named: bintang is the Indonesian word for star.

I'm thinking back to the mid-1970s now, but as I recall it was quite a reasonable bottled beer which, ice cold straight out of the fridge, was just right to slake your thirst in the hot tropics (Java is just below the equator).

I shall keep an eye out for it. According to the report I read, it will be imported. If so, I'll give a try, if only for old times' sake. If, on the other hand, it is brewed somewhere under licence, I'm not sure that I'd bother.

This is my 1,382nd post. It is the only one written solely about lager.

Needing some space

The Heatons Bridge, a popular community pub in West Lancs

I see the the Morning Advertiser has an article suggesting how pubs can make greater use of their space, particularly areas that are unused for much of the time. It all makes sense, as long as it doesn't impinge upon the main functions of a pub. How far a pub can follow the Advertiser's suggestions obviously depends very much on the amount and the nature of spare space available; the tendency in the 60s and 70s to knock pubs through massively reduced the numbers of function rooms that are available.

I have long been involved in groups that make use of pubs for specific purposes, such as folk clubs, union meetings, CAMRA meetings, political party meetings, as well as the more usual birthday parties, wedding celebrations and wakes. In work, management would book hotels for meetings and conferences or, when I worked in Norris Green in Liverpool, the hospitality suite at Everton FC, much to the chagrin of Liverpool fans. The union, not being so flush, would choose pub function rooms, which were usually free. Occasionally someone would raise the objection that some of our members might not wish to go into pubs because they weren't drinkers, but I'd argue that no one was obliged to drink alcohol, and that we'd be in a room without an open bar. If that wasn't sufficiently persuasive, I'd simply invite the person concerned to find another suitable free, or at least cheap, venue, and we'd go there. It's not as easy as people assume.

Recently, when the Lion pub was closed as I have mentioned recently, I did consider moving my song session to another pub, but the only one I approached wasn't interested; surprisingly, I couldn't think of another suitable venue that was suitable for us and also convenient for public transport.

A few years ago, a Wetherspoons pub agreed to reserve space a couple of mornings a week for a mother and toddler group. Predictably, there were horrified reactions from the usual suspects, so extreme you'd think they were suggesting sacrificing the first-born. I wasn't impressed with the objections: Spoons is a lot cheaper than expensive branded coffee houses, and if a young woman decided to have a glass of wine, so what?

The critics claimed to be concerned for the welfare of the mothers and children, but I thought them quite heartless. For many years, I was a home visiting officer for the DSS in Liverpool, and single parents made up quite a few of the clients I called upon. Some were fine, coping with support from friends and family nearby, but others were clearly isolated and lonely, having been housed in an area where they knew no one. I feel certain that something like the Wetherspoons group once or twice a week would have made a big difference, getting them away from the four walls, meeting others in similar circumstances and perhaps making new friends.

But such concerns wouldn't cross the minds of our self-righteous, self-appointed moral guardians, who failed to see that the proposed mother and toddler group was intended to reduce loneliness and isolation, a subject that I wrote about on 1 January.

It seems obvious to me that opening a pub to other uses when practical will justify its place as a valued part of the community. It will also help ensure it stays open for us drinkers.

Stamping a place on the gravy train

The mark of Satan?

It's nice when politicians have their finger on the pulse of the burning issues of the day. Bill Etheridge, an MEP for UKIP, a single issue party that has achieved its sole objective, is now looking around for something to justify continuing to receive his Euro-salary (three times the UK national average wage) from an institution he claims to hate. He's come up with a demand that the UK should reintroduce the old crown stamp on our pint glasses instead of the EU-wide CE mark.

He asserts that, "All drinkers remember the crown mark, knowing that it guaranteed them a full pint, indeed there are still some around." All drinkers? Perhaps it's true of some more mature drinkers, but

not of those who came of drinking age after the introduction of the CE mark. Regardless of the hyperbole, the real point is: do British drinkers - whatever their age and whether or not they remember the crown stamp - worry about this? I haven't done a survey, but I seriously doubt that anyone could care less.

Bill Etheridge: worth every penny!

Happy 2017

I'd like to wish a very Happy New Year to all of you who are so kind as to come here and read my ramblings on various subjects about real ale and real music. I am really pleased that some people feel this blog is worth looking at.  Thanks to you all!

I can proudly say that - unlike another beer blog that I have recently tried to comment on - I only delete comments that are abusive. I do not block comments that I disagree with. I therefore query the credibility of a self-styled right-wing libertarian who censors opinions he doesn't like. But that's up to him to explain, and should he choose to do so here, I won't delete his comment - unless it's abusive!

Anyway, enough of the killjoys:
I wish everyone a truly Happy New Year.

Christmas present idea

I've come across this advert; what a great idea to help children prepare for their drinking careers, especially as our stringent under-age drinking laws mean that young people cannot begin to acclimatise themselves to the world of alcohol in actual pubs and bars until they're 18, unlike many of us older hands.

I do hope the suitably scowling barman takes the keys to the pedal cars off any of his customers who imbibe too much.

Predictably, there has been an indignant and, at times, highly abusive moral panic in the USA where this advert originated. It seems that it's okay to drink, but not let your children play at it. It's not as though they're all going to turn into alcoholics; I used to buy sweet cigarettes as a kid, but I've never smoked a real one in my life.