A-Z of Hellraisers

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.' Hunter S. Thompson. 'I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars, the rest I just squandered.' George Best. 'Now, don't say you can't swear off drinking, it's easy, I've done it a thousand times.' W. C. Fields. 'I like my whisky old and my women young.' Errol Flynn. 'I was given six weeks to live, about 25 years ago!' Shane MacGowan. 'You can't drown yourself in drink. I've tried, you float.' John Barrymore. 'I'd hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day.' Dean Martin. This is the last word on boozy misbehaviour and the characters in this whopper of a book constitute the most amazing grouping to ever see print, from Peter the Great, famous for his debauched drinking orgies, to Benjamin Franklin who firmly believed that beer provided proof of God's existence, to Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham who suffocated on his own vomit after consuming forty measures of vodka; what a night out that was! We salute these glorious inebriates from Winston Churchill to Sid Vicious, Van Gogh to Billie Holiday, Alfred the Great to Ozzy Osbourne, and thank God we didn't have to live next door to any of them.