The only healthy liver in the village?
Channel 4's Dispatches this week set up a liver-testing clinic at Westminster and asked 200 MPs who signed the Early Day Motion about supermarket booze prices to drop in for a quick one.
The consultant specially drafted in from University College Hospital (UCH) positively beamed at the arrival of such a perfectly unhealthy specimen as North Devon MP Nick Harvey, the 45-year-old, two-stone-overweight All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group vice-chairman.
Harvey sheepishly admitted drinking four times his healthy allowance, blaming the allegedly stressful Westminster village lifestyle.
Just the type the programme-makers wanted to target with the new testing kit, in fact.
"I was terrified - they looked as if they were preparing to film an on-the-spot transplant," muttered the slightly abashed Lib Dem Shadow Defence Secretary.
Imagine the programme-makers' horror when the consultant declared Harvey's liver to be as fit as that of a healthy 11-year-old.
Worried they'd think he was underage, Harvey felt more reassured to learn that hardening detected by ultrasound causes concern when it reaches a count of 10; his was only 3.8. An enzyme in the blood becomes a problem at 35, while his measured 13, and some other sinister-sounding threat becomes a worry if it scores above 50, but Harvey only managed 45.
By a stroke of weird Snifter-ish synchronicity, the member for North Devon was recently quizzed in the Commons about the number of litres of alcohol purchased for sale in bars and restaurants of the House, and by the demure-sounding House Refreshment Department for catering functions on the Parliamentary estate.
That stressful Westminster lifestyle certainly has its antidotes: estimated total consumption in only 11 months to February 2007 was 53,495 litres in the bars and restaurants, and 30,517 litres at functions supplied by the Refreshment Department.
Snifter deduces that for every healthy liver in the village, there are more than a few MPs who could show Channel Four's programme-makers - and a certain vice-chairman - a thing or two about irresponsible limits.
