Oz And Gluck: A Pint Of Bitterness

Thanks to the iPlayer making the previously eminently missable now fast forwardable I’ve finally caught up with BBC 2’s Oz And James’ Great Free Booze Up. And well, yes, it is mild enough to be inoffensive, mildly education and mildly dull.

The priggish Oz Clarke, and part-time Stirling Moss look-alike, clearly knows rather a lot about booze while James May’s blitherings can amuse. In fact with their clashing voice-overs it is a little bit like a sedate version of Peep Show – but only if Jez and Mark had enjoyed a good private education, and had less disturbing sexual habits. Or at least nothing that can be tried in a caravan.

It’s a light, gentle, warming piece of work - unlike this pitiful cockery from Malcolm Gluck, a man with so steeped in print that he probably squirts ink if accidentally surprised.

But now Gluck has hit the web and he is angry. No tell a lie for rhetorical effect - (why not he does) he’s actually desperate, servicing-the-needs-of-dockers-for-food desperate.

Otherwise why would a once respected copy-monkey even type such wrist-tossed drivel as: “Well, beer is only drunk by losers and sadsacks, unsexy people who care nothing for their minds or their bodies.”

It’s obviously lazy, horribly lazy work. The kind of drivel that would shame a Tourette sufferer's Twitter feed. It is also stupidly short-term hit-garnering of the worst kind, as pathetic as me writing NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE.

The Guardian should really know better, and so should I. NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE should be at the top of the page and include today's celeb stiff-fest RICARDO MONTALBAN and PATRICK PRISONER MCGOOHAN.

Of course rising to his petty bait would be silly, especially if it gets added to his Comments list. Responding would be dignifying his unwarranted poking of the beery beast. Instead it is far better just to leave him to his gutter-dwelling without mentioning that his reference are out of date, his prose is leaden and that is face looks eerily like the weird curly-haired boy who once valued antiques on Wogan and is now a woman.

Just because one wine critic is doing well from himself eh Malcolm?

A Boon To Beer?

Gastro pork scratchings from the pages of Heston, musical evenings with a skat-jazz outfit from Preston and cider festivals with brews made in Weston. To survive and thrive in the current economic climate – as predicted by Peston - the modern publican has to innovate. Or follow this simple maxim: To get a head, get a celeb.

Using your skill, luck, judgement and Wikipedia can you spot what is the secret behind the success of the Ye Olde Punch Bowl Inn, the pub owned by the lightly comiced actor and voice-over artist Neil Morrissey? Could it be that C4 have allowed him to create a series of hour-long adverts for his own pub, his own beer and his own book?

I admit that I slumped my way through Morrissey’s Perfect Pint - along with the tiny fraction of the nation who didn’t turn off during Embarrassing Teen Bodies and go and do something less boring instead – like rate all their stolen songs out of five on iTunes.

And so here is my review of the programme: Meh. Now I understand your objection that I’ve resorted to L33T-speak there but since brevity is still meant to be the soul of wit, I win. LOL.

Anyway I'm hardly likely to start picking on some former sitcom star now am I? Not in the current climate.

However what the show also did was implant the dated 90s laddishness of Neil Morrissey as the acceptable face of ale. Not just in the doe-eyes of the proles but also for the media too. Now when it comes to commissioning editors, producers, researchers and hack-journos fumbling for guests or commentators about beer/pubs/brewing it will be unrelenting mediocrity that is La Moz that pops into their spazzed heads.

Okay so at least it will make a change from the Protz but there must be others? There has to be someone more suited to representing all our hopes and alcoholic dreams? Obviously we have to steer clear of any previous advocates: The ‘Lonesome George’ of The Today Programme- John Humphries, and a man who seems to be attempting to bring back the feudal system through his model villages and pricing of biscuits – Charlie Windsor.

Well who would you like to lead? Who should front the campaign to save our pubs from the wrecking ball or become 'six contemporary living spaces' ? Or even worse, the indifference and slow decline of that pubco ownership brings? Who would you like to see on your bottles of beer?

My suggestion is Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan. With his love of history, Hawksmoor churches and total dislocation from the rest of humanity, he could be the perfect spokesman. After all with his past of historical re-enactments, girl-autism and “weird nuts” he would at least chime with the public's expectations of us ale-drinkers.

And yet he still seems like a relatively decent human primarily because of Jeremy, a man so vapid, vain and morally pinballing through life that you wonder if he’s ever been on a boating holiday in Corfu.

It sounds unlikely doesn’t? After all who would pick a man best know for his lager drinking, his slavering lust for a woman that he can’t have (until the plot jumped the shark anyway) and a pitifully dysfunctional relationships with his distressing flatmate. But after last night that is what we’ve got.