STOUT HUMOR

NO TRIP to Dublin for a visitor would be complete without downing a pint of plain; thus the Guinness Storehouse (pictured) is the number one tourist attraction on the island.

But now you’ll be able to visit the English Guinness Storehouse.

The new attraction is set to open at Old Brewer’s Yard is a new microbrewery and culture hub in Covent Garden this autumn.

The Old Brewer’s Yard, first brewed beer back in 1722, although not Guinness of course.

Sir Arthur started brewing ales from 1759 at the St James’s gate Brewery — the Guinnesses have been laughing all the way to the bank ever since, and we’ve been laughing all the way to the bottle bank.

If you’re in Covent Garden, you may want to head down towards The Strand and thence along to Westminster. It’s a great walk, and you can ruminate on a few facts that you probably won’t be told at the Guinness Storehouse

When the Intoxicating Liquor (Advertisement Regulation) Bill was passing through parliament in 1935, Edward Cecil Lee Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh, sat in the British House of Lords.

He was entitled to do so under the arcane laws of the British legal and parliamentary system. When the Act came to be debated in the second chamber — after having been passed in the House of Commons — Lord Arnold spoke about the granting of permission of willy nilly advertising throughout the country.

He said: ‘I ask your Lordships, is it right, in these circumstances, to plaster the hoardings with these advertisements, urging people— and we are told it is specially designed to get young people—to drink? To deceive people who do not know the facts, and who are told again and again that ‘For an A1 nation beer is best’? I come next to an advertisement equally well-known: “Guinness is Good for You.”’

At that, The Lord Guinness, earl of Iveagh, rose to his feet to make his first ever contribution to the House of Lords after some 38 years — on a point of information. He addressed the House and in steady voice said: ‘It is.’ And sat down again.

KARL Marx is still in London. A century after his passing, the mortal remains of the Das Kapital author have become a valuable asset. A true capitalist development, in fact. Should you want your mortal remains buried near the political thinker, philosopher, economist, theorist, historian, then for £25,000 your tombstone could stand within sight of Marx’s. Or it could be another communist plot. Highgate Cemetery is a popular attraction; it is the epitome of a Victorian graveyard, once the site of duelling mourners, mobs of stake-carrying vampire hunters, and the resting place of writers, scientists and criminals. But if you’re in London and want to visit a cemetery — and hey! who doesn’t? — my advice would be to head for Stoke Newington and Abney Park Cemetery. Notables who take their eternal rest here include Albert Chevalier, better known as Champagne Charlie, and George Laybourne, one of the great performers and writers of the music hall era. The hangman William Calcroft lies here too — he was the public executioner responsible for sending the Manchester Martyrs to their doom, and was reported to have been particularly pleased to have despatched Fermanagh man Michael Barrett to an early grave. Michael, a Fenian deemed to have been responsible for the Clerkenwell bomb, was the last person to be publicly hanged in Britain or Ireland. It is also the last resting place of one of the founders of the Chartist movement, James Bronterre O’Brien, born two hundred years ago, and responsible for setting up the Chartist movement, who was an early champion for the freedom of the press. So go along and pay your respects to him.