Boring Ourselves to Death
Why a humble can of 'tramp juice' lager tells us more about Britain’s decline than any think-tank ever will.
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Sitting beside me is a can of the notorious Special Brew. Shorn of its old label—and shined into bougie respectability—this imposturous lager possesses just 7% alcohol compared to the once brain-belting nine percent ABV.
After sitting calmly like a Hindu cow, nothing magical happened. Something was AWOL. That sedative, oily glow as it seeps into one’s brain, healing and soothing the neural pathways like a dose of EST—nothing. Gone is the beauty of Special Brew.
Luckily, for research purposes, I imported a slab of the old recipe—Italians, it seems, are trusted to choose what they pour down their throats.
I giddily report the following symptoms: that feverish glow crawling along the upper lip, spreading upward and across the brow. Something is lighting tiny fires beneath my cheeks. The brain connects previously loose strands of thought. The only drink, as Kingsley Amis declared, so effortless in her ability to “create goodwill,” is doing just that. Along comes the creeping conviction that the British could be great and happy again if only we stopped taking ourselves so bloody seriously.
As a boy, I harboured a peculiar ambition: as soon as I could passably fake legal age, I’d scramble some pennies together and find out what that golden can of lager was really all about. In the local off-licence, she attracted the gentleman and the gentleman of the road alike.
I’d see them snap a single can of Spesh from a family of four. The other cans, sold in fours without exception, seemed conformist and dull and beset with envy and adulation toward the irreverent Special Brew on the top shelf. Here was a tipple to unite all peoples. Besides, anything dedicated to Winston Churchill by order of the Royal Danish Court is clearly a ducal affair.
Syrupy, thick with charm, surprisingly drinkable, blissfully unbothered by its vandal reputation—Special Brew seduced serious men. Churchill loved the stuff, and Kingsley Amis did, too.
Her shaky reputation was unwarranted. Anti-booze charities claimed Spesh was “as bad as heroin and crack” and a tipple not enjoyed but endured by the homeless and the helpless. In truth, her most ardent devotees were older professionals, who, like me, enjoyed the cause and effect of this riotous little lager.
Now it is a sanitised version of itself, just as this country has become a sanitised version of itself. I suspect this new recipe, in a previous life, drained its time posting personal-best 5Ks on LinkedIn. Special Brew—the old irreverent, the old fuck off, the old don’t take yourself too seriously—has fallen into the soup of conformity.
This is part of a wider trend of being told what to do. Declining and insecure civilisations always turn first to what people drink, think, eat, and laugh at. Those are the first pleasures to disappear when the elites are unsure of themselves. What is public safety if not insecurity made law? Crack open the head of every busybody, and you’ll find fear and self-loathing.
And so, the character who once embodied the truth-telling, irreverent spirit of the Special Brew devotee becomes a dying breed. His honesty is no longer appreciated in a culture of image, filters, and bullshit. Declining civilisations like to micromanage, and the result is always the same.
Christopher Lasch lamented the rise of personal branding—the death of the artisan and the ascent of the other-directed personality—or bullshitter in plain English. No wonder we are all so mentally unsound. We no longer know who we are, so we try to control that which we cannot.
Just glance at current trends: adverts ecstatically plugging alcohol-free beer. Your friends and loved ones plunging themselves into ice baths and waffling on about their protein windows.
The irony. A culture never so permissive has never been so abstemious. We have freed the individual from all constraints. And yet, they construct a bespoke iron cage and call it a journey.
Look, reader, it is no business of mine who drinks what or who optimises what. But live and let live works both ways. That was, in more cerebral times, called compromise. We enjoyed smoking sections in bars. Playing music on the Tube was a capital offence.
But the Puritans and the rule-makers have won. Thanks to a nonsense tax from on high, my favourite bottle of red costs me one pound more than last week.
Is that a life-changing sum? No. Will it prompt better choices? Absolutely not. What is it then but a surcharge on personal freedom?
This is why the battle of Special Brew proved vital in our struggle against the box-tickers and wellness bores. And it is one we lost thoroughly, meekly, without an errant swearword fired.
In more gloried times, Special Brew was a fearsome 9% by volume and four-and-a-half units per can.
The prigs, as usual, got what they wanted. Because 4.5 units exceeds the recommended daily allowance from our irreproachable NHS, the can itself once served as a kind of defiant gesture: a golden middle finger.
A confident country—and a confident brewer—might have leaned into this. Such ‘fuck you’ marketing would have pulled in many a professional tippler with magnetic force. Alternatively, they might have shrunk the can to the exact millilitre that evaded some nonsense guideline, the way New Yorkers brown-bag their tipple of choice to skirt municipal piety.
Instead, we sanitised. We complied. And we obeyed.
Conformity—true conformity—is always born of a lack of confidence. Great civilisations trust themselves; declining ones impose petty rules with which they beat their citizens over the head.
And so, we arrive here: a culture enchanted by rules and regulations and ‘it’s for the best.’
But all is not lost. For me, much of the current populist wave demands a return not to the 1950s but to a time when things made more sense, and when we minded our own business.
Only time will tell. And in that time, I will spend larcenous sums importing a glorious drink which, to borrow the therapy-speak of my betters, promotes wellness.
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Perfectly fine to get as much Zoloft as you want, or smoke a doobie with 10x the THC that was in Maui Wowie when I was young, but Gods forbid anyone should imbibe a generous helping of ethanol in one beverage. That's crossing a dangerous line!
For some of us, booze is about a sense of comradery as we slump on our bar stools sharing our glorious insights with anyone fortunate enough to be in the vicinity. Others of us, who pride themselves on being dus earning,enjoy the banter about vintage and nuances in taste. Speaking solely for myself, booze is about getting drunk and entering a sublime state of oblivion, temporarily able to discard all angst about the moronic government, the cost of living, the sight of Somalians in nightgown and plastic slippers parading down the local high street accompanying Victorian pillar boxes and football teams of primary school children. Those of my persuasion could never afford to do that on anything but cider and meths cocktails.