This week, following our inaugural appearance on "This Morning", our pod adopts an alternative approach to Burns Night and solves a mystery for those looking to drink something in honour of Hercule Poirot.

Burns Night is coming. Let's face it, if it wasn’t in January, no-one would take any notice. But after 25 moribund days of ‘meh’, celebrating the birthday of an 18th century tax collector with some root vegetables and stomach stuffed with bits of sheep sounds like a brilliant night out.

It’s not. A clichéd caricature of Scottish-ness, it’s tediously quaint, painfully kitsch and all those endless Immortal Memories, those cheesy Addresses to the Lassies; the dreary drone of the bagpipes would have bored the life out of the real Robert Burns.

So we suggest some alcoholic alternatives to breathe life back into Burns Night including:

Harviestoun Ola Dubh - you can get it the three different expressions, here.

Braemble gin Liqueur - Scottish blackberry with English London Dry Gin. £24.89 Master of Malt

The Long Bramble
25ml liqueur
100ml ginger ale or tonic
Pour the bramble over ice, in a highball, top with ginger ale, garnish with a wedge of lime, squeeze it in first


Cross Brew coffee liqueur, £25.74 Master of Malt

Cross Brew Negroni
20ml Cross Brew
30ml Campari
30ml Punt e Mes
Stir over ice and strain into rocks glass with ice

Whisky Deals
Mortlach 15 YO for £87.95 Whisky Exchange – saving £32.05

Aberlour 14-Year-Old Single Malt Whisky, £46 Waitrose - save £10

Cardhu, £26, Sainsburys - was £40

Woven Whisky, Experience N.11, Peachy, £55

POIROT
And then we celebrate a lesser-known milestone - the 103rd anniversary of the first ever Hercule Poirot novel - and honour the "detestable, bombastic, tiresome,egocentric little creep" with a superb Belgian stout.

Get Hercule Stout here

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