Hotel, Motel, Is That Your Foreskin? This week's pod recalls Tom's unfortunate and minor (very minor) costume malfunction on stage at the Alnwick Playhouse before raising a Rob Roy in memory of the Waldorf Astoria and exploring the ale-loving entrepreneur who invented Cat's Eyes.

Get your Worthington White Shield here: £3.59 from Beers of Europe

Rob Roy

50 ml Scotch Whisky,
20 ml Sweet Red Vermouth,
dash Angostura Bitters.
How To make a Rob Roy. Stir ingredients over ice in a mixing glass

Discerning Drinks Deals Of The Week

Waitrose, Kyro Gin, £25, £4.95 off,

Sainsburys, Cardhu Gold Reserve Single Malt Scotch £26 down from £40
1000 Stories Bourbon-Aged Zinfandel £12 down from £15

Master of Malt: Silent Pool Gift Pack for Mother's Day. £55 down from £65.

Other Stuff

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for every audience member, here:

• Oldham
• AUSTRIAN ALPS: ALTITUDE COMEDY FESTIVAL
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby

After a week off, the hardest working beefcakes in the drinks business slide back into the Pod saddle, digging their heels into some hard-nosed aural journalism and whipping up some searing investigative insight - namely the return of bananas to the UK in 1945 and. of course, National Pig Day (only America).

Like beer? Like bananas? Well you'll flipping love Mongozo Banana Beer - available here or via Amazon here

And how about A Pigs In Blanket Old Fashioned?

Pigs in Blanket Old Fashioned

Ingredients

12 pigs in blanket

70cl of Pork fat-washed whisky

5ml Maple syrup

2 dashes of Angostura Bitters

To make the fat-wash whisky

· Grill the pigs in blanket over a baking tray and collect 30ml of the fat.

· Strain it into a container filled with 70cl of blended Scotch whisky. Leave it to steep in the whisky for 6-8 hours or overnight at room temperature before placing the bottle in the freezer.

· Once the fat has congealed in the bottle, strain the bourbon into a new bottle.

Method:

· Take 40 ml pigs-in-blanket fat-infused whisky and stir in a mixing glass with the maple syrup and ice.

· Add bitters and stir.

· Strain into a child ‘Old Fashioned’ glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange slice.. Or a pig-in-blanket

While you're waiting for the pig fat to steep in the whisky, here's a video about pigs that play video games.

Drinks Deals Of The Week
Mirabeau La Folie Sparkling Rose - down £3 to £11 at Sainsburys
Johnnie Walker Black Label - Sainsbury, £22, save £10,

Martini Rosso, only £2.50 off, but down to £8 at Waitrose,
Jameson Orange, £15, save £9.50, great in an alternative to the Irish Espresso Martini Waitrose

For gin fans, Hayman’s London Dry Gin, fiver off, £21 Waitrose

Keep your eye out for the new Luxardo Espresso Liqueur

_____________________________

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for evewry audience member, here:

• Harpenden
• Northallerton
• Alnwick
• Oldham
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby

If drink-soaked discussion of aphrodisiacal accompaniments to oysters, 'titanic plums', guinea pigs with dodgy fivers, hangover cures and some seriously decent discounted drinks are your thing then listen to this Valentine's Special featuring a boffin.

VALENTINE DRINKS
The Properly Dangerous Liason
Ingredients
45ml Brockmans Gin
75ml Taittinger Champagne or Sparkling Wine
15ml Fresh Lemon Juice
10ml Creme de Cassis
5ml Sugar Syrup
Method

– Combine all ingredients apart from the sparkling wine and creme de cassis in a shaker over ice
– Shake to combine, double strain into a champagne flute and
– Top with Champagne, then drizzle over the creme de cassis.
– Garnish with a lemon twist.

Chilean Red Wine: Errazuriz Max Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon – £12.99, Waitrose

Chargrilled asparagus with Westmalle Tripel – £4.20 from Beer Merchants

Oysters with Titanic Plum Porter – £1.80, Sainsbury’s

Discerning Drinks Deals
Aperol, Morrisons, reduced from £20 to £15.99,

Morrisons, Courvoisier VSOP, £29.99, down from £37,

Gin deal of the week, Sainsbury, 1l of Tanqueray, £20,

Asda Beer Deals

You can get two packs for a tenner on certain beers.

So 4xJaipur and 6x Pilsner Urquell for £10.

That’s a tenner for 10 quality beers, so that makes them £1 each. Some maths for you.

_____________________________

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for evewry audience member, here:

• London Leicester Square (THURSDAY 9th Feb)
• Harpenden
• Northallerton
• Alnwick
• Pendle
• Oldham
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby

We tell the WWII story behind Whisky Galore before linking a classic gin cocktail to a tale of someone knocking a vase over.

You should listen.

The Ola Dubh range is available from The Whiskey Exchange

Sainsbury has its Villa Maria on at £8.75, down from a tenner,

Jameson is £19 down from £22.50,

Gin deal of the week, Asda and Waitrose are going at it in their bid to bring you the best price on Tanqueray Ten
Waitrose, £27,

Aviation Cocktail

60ml gin

15ml Maraschino Liqueur
10ml Créme De Violette

25ml Lemon Juice

Lemon zest, to garnish

Shake gin, lemon juice, maraschino liqueur and crème de violette over ice, Taste, then add a splash of chilled water to dilute, if you like. Strain into four chilled cocktail glasses and garnish with blueberries and lemon zest.

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for evewry audience member, here:

• Nottingham - 241 tickets use the word DRINKER
• London Leicester Square
• Harpenden
• Northallerton
• Alnwick
• Pendle
• Oldham
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby

Hail Henry VIII's death with Tynt Meadow - the only Trappist Beer in Britain.

Read Mark Dredge's great article about the monastery in Good Beer Hunting here:

Watch the documentary "Outside City" - all about the realities of the modern-day Monky business here.

AA Milne & The Bee's Knees Cocktail

Get Hiver Blonde Beer from Waitrose here

Bee's Knees Cocktail

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons of honey
• 50ml Portobello Gin
• 25ml Lemon Juice
• Ice

Method: Loosen up the honey in a jug by stirring it with a little bit of freshly boiled water. When it's smooth, add the mixture to a shaker filled with plenty of ice, the lemon juice and the gin. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with some lemon zest.

This week's "Les Bargains"

Benriach The Original Ten Speyside Single Malt Scotch, £29 Waitrose (save £9)
Sweet and easy-drinking intro into whisky.

Balblair 15 Year Old, Whisky exchange, £64.95 (£13 off)
A bit more punchy, 46%, full-bodied, matured in ex-bourbon casks and finished in first-fill Spanish oak butts.

Vestal Kaszebe 2011 Vintage Vodka, Whisky Exchange at £21.95 (£8 off)
The potatoes used as the based for this vodka are the Vineta varietal and are all grown in the Kaszebe region of central northern Poland.

Absolute, £16, Asda
Great vodka for mixed drinks and recreating the scene in Wolf of Wall Street

Heineken 0,0, 6xcans for £4.50,

Sainsburys doing Bacardi Carta Blanca for £14, £2 off.
Makes a wicked daiquiri, 700ml bottle, 50ml per daiquiri, how many can you make? You do the math.

________________________________

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for evewry audience member, here:

• Nottingham - 241 tickets use the word DRINKER
• London Leicester Square
• Harpenden
• Northallerton
• Alnwick
• Pendle
• Oldham
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby

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

________________________________

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for evewry audience member, here:

• Nottingham - 241 tickets use the word DRINKER
• London Leicester Square
• Harpenden
• Northallerton
• Alnwick
• Pendle
• Oldham
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby

Amid all this talk of Harry and Meghan, we explore Edward VII, aka "Dirty Bertie" - the original Playboy Prince with some cracking King's Ginger liqueur.

Then, having once again proven that #winewritingiswelleasy, we make ourselves a Bicicletta for birthday boy and Pirate peddler Marco Pantani.

If you'd like to see Edward VII's 's3x chair' (and why wouldn't you?) then click here.

Amazon is offering a great deal on King's Ginger, complete with swanky gift tin, for just £23 here. You're welcome.

King's Mulled Cider
50ml The King's Ginger
150ml Cider
150ml Apple juice
Serve in a handled glass, hot or over ice.
Garnish with lemon, cinnamon stick and fresh blackberries.

Marco Pantani

Here's the picture of Marco shaking an Italian policeman's hand after some rather ripe parking manouevres and here's a picture of his statue in Northern Italy.

For Campari, the best price is at Morrisons, £15.50 - click here

The Bicicletta

• 50ml Campari
• 75ml White wine
• Soda Water

Built over ice, use a wine glass or a highball glass

Other Royal Drinks:

King Charles's Royal Lochnagar 12 year old, Whisky Exchange, £40.95

Megan Markle's Tignanello 2018 can be found at Fine Wine Direct for £180

Buy yourself or someone else annual membership (and a signed copy of our award-winning Thinking Drinkers Almanac Book) for just £120 here.

• 3 x 60ml pouches containing 3 x world class spirits delivered direct through your door every month.
• Exclusive access to the TD online magazine
• A signed copy of Thinking Drinkers Almanac (named Drinks Book of the Year 2021 by The Sunday Times)
• Monthly Online Tastings with The Thinking Drinkers & Guests

Check out dates and tickets for our "Thinking Drinkers Pub Quiz" show, featuring lots of laughs and FIVE free drinks for evewry audience member, here:

• Nottingham
• London Leicester Square
• Harpenden
• Northallerton
• Alnwick
• Pendle
• Oldham
• Brighton
• Bedford
• Reading
• Didcot
• Stroud
• Leicester
• Corby