Morrissey’s Perfect Pint. Richard Fox

– as you hit a certain point in your life, no matter how often you get off the bus a stop early, the inches keep creeping on to your waistline. Your once-perfect physique (maintained regardless of how many chip butties and pints you threw down your neck) is starting to bulge. Welcome to middle-aged spread. Pints of beer help it along nicely; if you get very good at it, your stomach can get big enough (and near enough) to rest your pint on without danger of spillage.

      MORRISSEY MAXIM

      Treat your woman like your beer – pump her gently but firmly until she’s got a good head on her.

       Your good health, sir

      We all know that beer is good for you but we would never claim any of the following. These may not stand up in court, but ‘researchers’, i.e. scientists, have said that these things are TRUE. Are they having a laugh?

      Beer can increase your ability to make rational decisions. Seriously. So next time you grab your keys at the end of a long sesh, screech out of the pub car park and into a lurking police car, you can explain to the unhappy officer that you were following the advice of Canadian researchers who claimed that your decision-making was improved by drinking beer.

      Students! BEER MAKES YOU BRAINY. ‘Researchers’ (yes, them again) claim that people who consumed anywhere between one and 30 (like the scale!) drinks a week were brainier in tests than teetotallers … stick that in your pint of Why?

      Beer Drinkers will eventually become immortal. ‘Research’ shows that beer makes your heart fitter by stretching your arteries, which means you live longer and can drink more. Which means Beer Drinkers WILL RULE THE WORLD. Your round, I think …

      What’s more, Italian researchers say that beer stops you going to the shops in your pyjamas when you’re older. You can stay in the pub, alert, suave and sophisticated, while the abstemious ones get carted off to the Piss and Dribble Home.

      Beer keeps you regular. Two pints contain twenty per cent of your required daily fibre intake. You can get ahead by drinking ten pints a day.

      Real ales contain Vitamin B, which will combat the effects of alcohol – IT ACTUALLY STOPS YOU GETTING A HANGOVER!

      As we sit here and write this, our rational decision-making is also being improved. Cheers.

       Pint trivia

      Did you know? No, of course you didn’t; but then neither did we … so here it is.

       Beer words and phrases

      Did you know that when you describe something as ‘ropey’ or use a ‘rule of thumb’ you are using brewing words?

      Ropey – if you think something is not up to scratch then you may call it ‘a bit shit’ or ‘ropey’. That comes from strands of bacteria floating in infected beer – fit only for the drain or the Stella pump.

      Rule of Thumb – before brewers had a thermometer to check the temperature at different stages of the brewing process, they used to stick their thumb in to see whether the brew was at the right level. This was called the ‘rule of thumb’.

      Mind Your Ps and Qs – We have it on good authority (see Talking Shit, page 107) that the ‘Ps and Qs’ in question are pints and quarts. When things got a bit messy after three solid days drinking at your 18th-century hostelry, the landlord would shout ‘Mind your pints and quarts’ as a way of reminding his faithful (if completely oblivious) customers that, if they were too rowdy, they might spill their drink.

      Three Sheets to the Wind – is a sailor’s expression, from the days of sailing ships. The terminology of sailing ships is excessively complicated and, every time I refer to it, people say I’ve got it wrong, usually contradicting each other. So treat what follows as a broad-brush treatment, open to dispute on the fine points. We ignorant landlubbers might think that a sheet is a sail, but, in traditional sailing-ship days, a sheet was a rope, particularly one attached to the bottom corner of a sail (it actually comes from an Old English term for the corner of a sail). The sheets were vital, since they trimmed the sail to the wind. If they ran loose, the sail would flutter about in the wind and the ship would wallow off its course out of control.