We sat in our hundreds on Thursday on the pew seats and chairs of St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. The occasion was to remember the journalist Dominic Prince...
For restaurant critic William Sitwell , the pleasure of a glass of good wine far outweighs the detrimental effects of alcohol He was an important investigative writer on the corrupt of the City of London, a stalwart business manager to his wife, the former Telegraph cookery writer Rose Prince , and a drinker.
The booze that was a running thread through his life – he regarded a glass of white Burgundy as a palate cleanser pre-lunch before one got stuck into the claret – finally undid him. He died at just 64. His going leaves his family and friends bereft of a scurrilous, amusing, fiercely loyal friend, and the world without a skilled newspaperman.
The service at St Bride’s Church, known as the journalists’ church, took me back some two decades to the memorial service there for my father Francis. He was not a journalist, but occupied their territory as a financial PR man and one of the best-connected figures in the City. Lunch, lots of it, over many years, also undid him, although it was, I recall, at the end, a photo-finish between his organs. I lament these lovable, huggable characters.
I miss their charm, and those glints in the eye at the prospect of a drink. But what is the lesson? What must we draw from the deaths of great men and women who succumbed to the social glue of the bottle? Is it to raise a glass to their memory, take one last sip and go dry?
, I also feel a stubborn, perhaps inconvenient, gratitude that alcohol has brought me some of my best, most vivid and most unguarded times. It has brought me closer to friends – and it has furnished me with a livelihood. As a critic, I drink for pleasure and to drive the economy. As a restaurateur, I appreciate those who delve deep into my wine list at the White Hart, fill everyone’s glasses and then plunge in again.
You can’t make much margin on food, so we survive on the efforts of our thirsty sippers. I hear the ring of the metaphorical bell of joy when a table calls for “more Château Reynier! ” It would be easy to follow the dictates of the chief medical officer or liver disease-related charities.
They would point to the evils of alcohol, the broken relationships, the hurt and pain of the loved ones of alcoholics, and the links between drink and disease. And they would be right. But the memory of drinks shared is what binds me to Dominic, to my father and countless others. The long lunches in which we talk politics, gossip mercilessly, settle nothing and order more bottles.
And it’s not just the effect it has. Another justification for booze is the deep pleasure I get from drinking great wine. The back story of what’s in the glass, the flavour and the resulting sensation can make a beautiful moment magnificent. I think of the camaraderie shared between my prep-school pals from the now-defunct school Maidwell Hall when we met recently for lunch.
It was a long, wine-fuelled occasion, much of that fuel being the miracle of pinot noir from Central Otago. The stories and laughter would not have been so deep and meaningful on Coca-Cola and tap water, that view of Sussex not quite the same paradise without the locally grown fizz in hand.
And, wary that close friends and my father perished by the bottle, I endeavour to become match-fit for my sipping, cycling that bit harder on my Peloton, charging across the fields at home with extra vigour to earn my white Burgundy palate cleansers. To swerve the perils of a slide from merriment to the oblivion of alcoholism, I also have rules.
I don’t drink before 12.30pm, and if there’s a long lunch in the offing I’ll put a train or a swim in the diary for 4.30pm. And I’ll swerve drinks and dinner that night, fasting, if you must call it that, until the morning. And if there’s no liquid lunch, I won’t start sipping until 7pm, post-bath, and knock it on the head by 10.30pm.
Sitwell imposes strict rules to ensure his drinking habits do not veer into the realm of excess - Jim Wileman Britain has historically been fuelled by booze, and we certainly need it now with this bunch of relentlessly gloomy, dire and disingenuous Government leaders. And, of course, hospitality needs it.
, the airline boss, demanded this week that we refrain from sipping before boarding his planes – to which I say, a glass or two at an airport ’Spoons is the only way of bearing a ride on his dreadful Ryanair flights. In a tribute at the memorial service, fellow hack Alan Cochrane described the newspaper regime as a prisoner-of-war camp in which we, on the escape committee, had a duty to elude the authorities and make it to El Vino for a liquid lunch.
Those days are like another country. But is our culture better for it? Are better books printed because publishers aren’t getting wrecked at lunch? Is the City thriving because investors aren’t getting trollied?
Is politics improved because Westminster isn’t squiffy? The lesson of the deaths of Dominic, of my dad and other merry legends is to seek a judicious, splendid sip to toast their lives and the examples they set. And to remind ourselves that most occasions are improved by lashings of hooch. Try full access to The Telegraph free today.
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White Burgundy Dominic Prince Effects Of Alcohol Palate Cleanser Restaurant Critic William Sitwell St Bride’S Church Dominic
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