Rudolph, the red-nosed barman
It's high time we stopped sidelining the most important figure in the Nativity story and gave him a fair share of the celebrity stardust that gets sprinkled on Santa, argues Adams Edwards
Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus tend to get good press at this time of year. The anniversary of the Nativity guarantees cover stories in Hello! and OK!, acres of tabloid press and hours of primetime television. Other media coverage includes prayers and songs in dedicated houses of worship, door-to-door singers and cards featuring the trio.
This annual bout of publicity for these New Testament celebrities brushes stardust onto others in the Biblical circle. Herod, for example, always gets good coverage for his classic baddie role, the angel Gabriel has his fans, the three wise men and shepherds enjoy their moment in the limelight, and there is even a bit of glory for the lowly ass.
And yet, bizarrely, the most important figure in the whole shebang is always overlooked - the innkeeper.
Nobody bothers to celebrate the fact that it was a licensee who, despite his "no vacancies" sign, found Joseph and Mary somewhere to kip... and sorted out a makeshift cot for the kid. If it hadn't been for the man behind the pumps, the Nativity would not have happened as it did. If he had turned the family away, the Son of God might have ended up lying in scrubland and nobody, including the wise men, would have found him.
Mine host risked his career doing the right thing. If Judea Customs and Excise had known that some illegal immigrants from Galilee were dossing in the tavern's stables with a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, the friendly landlord would have been for the high jump.
Social services would have been called, health and safety informed, and the local fire department would have done him for dangerous frankincense smoke and no fire doors.
The Food Standard Agency would have rapped him over the knuckles for serving victuals in the same room as animals. The VAT man would have been suspicious about the wise men's gold, while a prudish member of the public would have complained about noise from the stable party.
One doesn't need to be Caesar to realise that the landlord of the Bethlehem boozer put his licence on the line for Joseph and his missus. And what has been his legacy for this selflessness? Zilch.
Worse still, the innkeeper's role as the good egg in the Nativity pageant has been hijacked by a roly-poly Victorian figure from Lapland. Father Christmas has stolen the red cheeks, beer gut and infectious ho ho ho laugh from the licensee. He has even bagged the pub bell and made it his own.
It is Santa who gets the plaudits. He swans about in the snow having a laugh while the man who should be lauded for creating the Christmas story is forced to serve Snowballs to drunken secretaries.
It is time this wrong was righted. The innkeeper, not Santa, should become the Christmas figure delivering goodness. He should be represented in his traditional waistcoat and cheery manner in shopping malls, dispensing shots of liquor to adults and handing out cola and crisps to children.
Christmas songs should reflect the innkeeper's revised standing, with rewritten words such as Rudolph The Red-Nosed Barman, It Came Upon a Martini Clear and Jingle Bells and Gordons. Hollywood might remake the movie A Christmas Carol with Scrooge as a landlord and the Spirit of Christmas Past and Present nestling in the optics, while The Nutcracker ballet could be recast to include a princely licensee fighting a fierce battle against a dangerous salted peanut.
It is time the real dispenser of Christmas cheer, the innkeeper, was given his celebrity due and the hoodie-clad imposter who climbs down chimneys into our homes in the dead of night was served with an ASBO.
Doom and gloom
It is gloomy news that the sales of mainstream blended whiskies have declined by more than a third in the last quarter of a century (from 13 million cases in 1980 to eight million last year). This news is, in my view, not in the least mitigated by the soaring sales of single malt whisky that can cost up to £50 a shot.
According to Diageo president Rob Malcolm: "There's a new affluent class of bankers and successful businessmen who are looking for something with status and maybe looking to show off."
Too right, Rob. If ever there is a case of the emperor's new clothes, it is the cult of the expensive single malt whisky.
Single malt whisky is an invention of the 1980s marketing men. Before that, it was a rare, inaccessible drink suitable to few palates, obscure in taste and flavour. A whisky anorak may have enjoyed the difference between a 10-year-old Glengoyne and a 12-year-old Isle of Jura, but for most of us they tasted like TCP.
The Victorians, who understood food and drink, would not and did not have malt whisky in their drawing rooms. It was, as far as they were concerned, no better than poitin.
It was only at the turn of the century, after a member of the Haig distilling family invented the patent, the still and lightened the malt with a grain spirit, that the greatest alcoholic drink on earth was born - blended whisky. That was the day the Sassenachs fell in love with Scotch and turned it into an English drink.
The decline of our love of the real thing while buffoonish bankers with more money than sense are conned by canny Scotsmen into drinking and praising the burgeoning market of lowly, crude single malts, makes me want to weep into my Famous Grouse.
