Literature and alcohol have long been seen as natural bedfellows, from the young Christopher Marlowe with his colossal buttery accounts at Cambridge in 1585, to the screenwriter and novelist Bruce Robinson (most famous for his drink- sodden film Withnail and I) who likes to swig beer while tapping out his screenplays. But it is surely in the 20th Century that the love affair between boozing and writing reached its apogee with dipsomaniac scribes such as William Faulkner, F Scott Fitgerald and Dylan Thomas, whose last words are reputed to have been "I've had 18 straight whiskies......I think that's the record". When I lived in New York I went occasionally to the White Horse Tavern, which was Dylan’s favourite bar in the city. Screwed to the bar was a small plaque stating that ‘from here Dylan Thomas sailed out to die’. On his fourth American tour in 1953 he was so ill from the effects of chronic alcoholism that he suffered blackouts, behaved erratically and referred to his wife Caitlin as ‘my widow’. He had his whisky binge at what he affectionately called ‘The Horse’ in the early hours of the 4th of November and made his famous comment about ’18 straight whiskeys’ on his return to the Chelsea Hotel. However he returned to the White Horse for a couple of beers later that day and did not die until the 9th November. It is far more likely that his last words were: “after 39 years, this is all I’ve done”, which were witnessed in the Chelsea Hotel by the painter Jack Heliker. The “18 straight whiskies” quote , however, fits more neatly into the ‘romantic drunk’ mould and has been fixed in the popular imagination as his dying words. When I visited the White Horse I didn’t attempt to beat Thomas’s record and I would have been a fool to do so – and not just because 18 American shots of whisky could be fatal even to a young liver. Dylan Thomas loved to exaggerate his drinking prowess and the owner of the bar, interviewed shortly after Dylan’s death, reported that the precise number of shots was more likely six (18 would probably have killed the very unwell Thomas on the spot). There is some controversy about the treatment given to Thomas by the doctor but his liver (which was described as ‘fatty’ by the coroner) was on its way out. But I hate to be a killjoy. I should point out that Thomas is probably my favourite poet and I certainly enjoy the colourful stories of the great drinker/writers of the past. My favourite is probably playwright, actor and screenwriter John Osborne (pictured above). He was a great Champagne drinker who quaffed away almost all his writing life in an apparent non-stop celebration of the fact that he had acquired considerable wealth through his pen. Famously Osborne kept a fridge in his bedroom entirely for chilling Champagne. When he moved out of his mansion near Edenbridge in Kent the new owners dredged the lake – and found the banks choked with empty Champagne bottles. But my favorite detail is the pet word he had for Champagne. At their home at 30 Chelsea Square, Osborne and his then wife, Jill Bennett, would dispense with the word "Champagne" altogether and simply ask guests; “Would you like some?” or “I think we’ll have some”. When I read about this in John Heilpern’s superb biography, John Osborne, A Patriot for Us, I found it so appealing I briefly attempted to instigate the practice into my own circle of family and friends. This failed when my brother, prompted by my campaign, sent me a text which said, “shall we have some?” and I, having already forgotten all about it, dopily replied: “what?” Osborne’s marriage to Jill Bennett, it has to be said, was not a great success. A bitter divorce was followed by her suicide, prompting Osborne to announce, after her funeral, that his only regret was that he hadn’t shat in her grave. Could this be the least chivalrous utterance in history? Osborne himself died far too young, even for the original “angry young man”. His liver, of course, was the problem, Champagne, sadly, the culprit. But as well as “Look Back in Anger”, “The Entertainer”, “Tom Jones” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade” – all masterpieces in my opinion, he also left us the image of a lake choked with Champagne bottles as an eternal symbol of decadence and joie de vivre. Shall we have some?
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