Rhythm and booze
SO it finally arrived – Super Saturday – and the boozers are open again!
Boris has asked us to behave with restraint and self-discipline, which is a bit rich coming from a Prime Minister who was a member of the Oxford posh boys’ Bullingdon Club.
This society was reputed by its own former Hooray Henry members to have dinners that involved extreme inebriation, vandalism and public cavorting with ladies of the night. So anything within those limits And we’re doing OK then, BoJo?
So how do we stop things turning into one of Hogarth’s 18th-century “Beer Street and Gin Lane” etchings of bacchanalian mayhem?
One earlier proposed scheme which could be resurrected is where boozers might face the bizarre prospect of being breathalysed before entering nightspots. Gerraway.
Well, apparently it’s to stop the increase in drinkrelated violence – and any sane person can only applaud that; but have they police really thought it through? Most people will drink before stumbling into a boozer or club – always have, always will – the question is, do you really need to a breath test to show if you’ve had too much doon your neck?
There is a highly accurate intoxication indicator already in existence that the law enforcement agencies might wish to employ.
Let’s look at the role of technology. Since the early nineties a specialised piece of equipment has been available in many clubs and bars that demonstrates immediately that a person is clearly hammered – the good old Karaoke machine.
This is a precision piece of engineering with a tried-and-tested format for judging the level of inebriation. Indeed, the songs themselves could form the basis for a sliding scale of offences.
Level 1: Initially, anybody rushing up to grab the mic to sing a bonafide floor-stamping classic like “500 miles” by the Proclaimers or “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Stones will get a sympathetic ear from the powers that be.
Why? To be fair, people have always enjoyed a social sing-song since the Victorians around the piano or even cave folk chanting around a fire, so the urge to bellow along to such catchy timeless classics won’t constitute an immediate offence to our new “beer police”.
Less understanding, however, might be demonstrated to the next level of misdemeanour.
Level 2: An urge to get up and start tackling a song where you can only actually manage the chorus is really heading for dangerous territory. Even though the lyrics are on a little telly in front of you, an ability to mumble only “Bye Bye Miss American Pies” with any clarity in a song that lasts for over three minutes will be painful for everybody in the room.
You clearly are only a whiskey or two away from an even more antisocial act! The alarm bells really start ringing when your lager goggles cloud your awareness to such an extent to contemplate the next offence.
Level 3: A song from a cartoon! Be it “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, from Despicable Me 2, or “Let it Go” from Frozen – it ain’t gonna end well. Leave it for the bairns.
This takes us to Level 4, where a night in the cells beckons – songs where you don’t really understand that the lyrics are deeply inappropriate – swaying, licking your lips and pelvic thrusting sweatily in front of the senior management team on a work’s night out while slurring Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” is merely a slightly more original way to signal your job resignation.
Our final level is for those who need to be taken to casualty before being banged up!
Level 5’ers are those alcoholfuelled mentalists who meddle with that which should not be attempted by humankind – songs in foreign tongues.
La Bamba is a Spanish song about a goat and should not be “sung” by a mullered shop assistant from Shields who has NO idea what she’s on aboot. Similarly, an attempt by an inebriated crane operator from Killingworth to sing Nena’s eighties classic “99 Red Balloons” in it’s original German merely ends up sounding unpleasantly like a Waffen SS marching song.
Drink if you like, sing if you like – but not both at once in public, pets.