Seeing red over a tipple
QUESTION In one of his songs, Christy Moore mentions getting drunk on Red Biddy. What is this?
CHRISTY MOORE, born on May 7, 1945, is one of Irish music’s best singer/ songwriters. The former lead vocalist and chief songwriter of Planxty and Moving hearts, he helped bring Irish musical traditions up to modern standards.
The reference to Red Biddy can be found in the song Missing You from his 1989 album Voyage. ‘Who did you murder, are you a spy? ‘I’m just fond of a drink helps me laugh, helps me cry
‘Now I just drink Red Biddy for a permanent high
‘I laugh a lot less and I’ll cry till I die.’
Red Biddy was a drink of legend, a mix of cheap red wine and highly dangerous methylated spirits that rendered the drinker blind drunk and often mad. It was also known as Red Lizzie, in reference to cheap Lisbon wine. Red Biddy may be a corruption of this.
Its consumption in Scotland was so prodigious that it heralded the introduction of the Methylated Spirits (Scotland) Bill (1937). When debating the Bill in the Commons, Lord Kinnaird said: ‘In one of the largest towns in Scotland, the statistics show that in the cases of onetwelfth of the people who were arrested for drunkenness, it could be attributed to the drinking of methylated spirits.’
Author Kingsley Amis recommended Red Biddy as part of a decent breakfast in his booze-befuddled novel Lucky Jim: ‘The three pints of bitter he’d drunk last night with Bill Atkinson and Beesley might, by means of some garbaged alley through the space-time continuum, have been preceded by a bottle of British sherry and followed by half a dozen breakfast cups of Red Biddy.’
Yate’s Wine Lodge once sold a drink under this name, a concoction of red wine and grape brandy. But given Moore’s character in the song is ‘wrapped up in old cardboard under Charing Cross Bridge’, we can assume he was drinking the original version.
James Suckley, Lincoln. BEING brought up in Liverpool, I saw winos gathering around Yate’s Wine Lodge. Their favourite drink was cheap red wine enhanced with meths, which they called Red Biddy.
Brasso metal polish strained through a nylon stocking was added for extra zing.
John Green, Dover, Kent.
QUESTION Fifty years ago, my wife had to wear white wooden clogs while working as a nurse in the operating theatre. Why was this necessary?
WHEN I started work in an operating theatre in the early Seventies, we had to change from our outdoor clothes and footwear because of the risk of introducing harmful bacteria to the patients.
The footwear we were provided with were wooden clogs or boots.
The rubber soles were anti- static because of the risk of sparks being generated and an explosion occurring because of the volatile nature of the anaesthetic gases.
The closed toe gave protection from accidently dropped instruments, such as scalpels. The clogs had the added advantage of being easily cleaned from blood spatters and were comfortable. Ioleen Slater (former SRN theatre sister),
Lytham St Annes, Lancs.
QUESTION When was the FTSE 100 established? At what level was it set?
The FTSe 100 was launched on January 3, 1984, with a base level of 1,000, largely replacing the FT30 as the main indicator for the performance of companies listed on the London Stock exchange (LSe). The FT30 Index was created by the Financial Times on July 1, 1935. It is the oldest continuous index in the UK.
In 1935, editor Maurice Green and chief leader writer Richard ‘Otto’ Clarke of the Financial News (which later merged with the Financial Times) created what Clarke called ‘a truly modern and sensitive industrial ordinary share index’.
The idea was to get a clear picture of economic activity by choosing stocks among the most actively traded.
The original list contained many familiar names — Austin Motors, Bass, Dunlop Rubber, harrods and RollsRoyce. The FT30 began at 100 points and is currently at 2,100.
The FTSe 100, jointly owned by the FT and the LSe, is made up of the 100 largest UK listed companies’ performance.
It is updated throughout the working day and a closing price is calculated at 4.30pm each trading day.
Because only 16 companies earn 100 per cent of their revenues in the UK, it has been suggested the FTSe 100 no longer reflects the health of Britain’s economy.
Some financial experts suggest that the FTSe 250 — comprising the 250 largest companies listed on the LSe — is a better indication of the country’s economic well-being.