Called to the Bar

Britons have a special aptitude for being drunk and are rightly famous the world over for it. Whether it’s lager-fuelled football hooligans or Scotch-doused MPs, getting inebriated is a national pastime and is as much a part of our heritage as over-boiled vegetables, tea and losing at sport.

So it is fitting that the Department of Social Scrutiny should relax a little – in strict accordance with official guidelines – and spend a little time sampling the delights of the British hostelry.

Real ale

Working class gut-filler served from a diseased medieval pump at room temperature. A real ale drinker can grow a respectable beard in a day, but many do not stop there and go on to develop an unhealthy interest in folk music, computer programming or Celtic languages.

Lager

Principally consumed by louts and other people who believe they have a sense of humour, lager has become steadily stronger over the years. Some brands can now be used to fuel light aircraft, or be mixed with cider to make excellent cleaning fluid.

Alcopops

Fizzy, sweetened compound of spirit and mixer, popular among feral children and their nominally adult counterparts. A similar drinking experience to lemonade, but instead of a brief sugar buzz before you kiss your parents goodnight, you may unaccountably find yourself in a hot-wired Fiesta, being chased up the M40 by a convoy of swerving police cars.

Cocktail

Something of an alcoholic pick ‘n’ mix, drinking cocktails is essentially just serious drinking dressed up with accessories. Slices of fruit, olives, ice and the odd miniature parasol will not mitigate the brain-blowing fusion of tipples you have assembled your drink from.

Generally, the more flamboyant the cocktail, the more you should be wary of the drinker.

Wine

Nothing underlines the British attitude to drinking better than wine. The French regard it merely as liquid food, to be savoured as part of a meal, while the British pub has largely turned its consumption into an exercise in getting gently, but industrially, pissed – a process attacked with characteristic British vigour and determination.

Cider

Cider drinkers lean on country gates giving bad directions to lost motorists as part of a rural conspiracy to re-mystify the countryside. A stronger variant, farmhouse scrumpy, has an even more pronounced effect, and is implicated in the creation of a race of super-strength, straw-sucking psychopaths that dance naked through the night at unmanned

Gin

A catastrophic addiction in the offing, gin attracts drinkers from both the slow sip and the intravenous ends of the market. Its present use as a suburban muscle-relaxant is laudable, but you can relive its dark past – it was the ruin of 18th-century London – with supermarket gin, a bottle of which is a marginally more challenging quaff than barbecue fluid.

Tequila

In most formulations, tequila is a drink that has elevated getting drunk to a bitter and warped fetish. After a few slammers, drinkers typically develop a glazed, maniacal stare that could cut through zinc, and many will actually try. A quick and dirty brain-steamer that is not at all British, but is included here as a warning to you all.

Scotch

Scotch drinkers would like you to think that, in drinking terms, they are gentlemen among thieves. Their vocabulary of wafty adjectives ranks as frankly silly, when you consider that chilled creosote has roughly the same effect as the ludicrously priced piss-pot full of ethanol that apparently has a “smokey burn”. Steer clear.

Absinthe

Considered something of a radical tipple, if you’re looking for a different kind of drink, absinthe will fit the bill.

Or you could try electric convulsive therapy, which has the same effect, but will not stain your tie.

If you find an empty absinthe bottle on a bar, it’s possible the user is beyond their most effective in terms of thwarting their inherent lunacies.