My life in drinks, Alex James: 'My best drink as a kid was Top Deck shandy'
The Blur bassist, 54, tells Samuel Fishwick about drinking in the sixth form, his grandad’s gooseberry wine and clinking glasses (almost) with the Queen
The most memorable place I've ever had a drink is on top of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, just outside Mexico City. I was arrested shortly afterwards. It was 1998, I'd just turned 30, and after bribing the guys on the door I was toasting the dawn with some fine tequila and some friends I'd met at a club. Then we saw the police van coming. We just about managed to blag ourselves out of it but, you know, I'd do it all again.
Queen Elizabeth II liked to drink, didn't she? I had a glass with her at a royal reception. They had a lot of breakages because it's very fine crystal at the royal households, so the Queen would lift the glass and go 'boop', not quite making contact – an air cheers, if you like.
The best advice I ever had over a drink was from Jimmy Destri, the Blondie keyboard player. He said, 'Buy bricks. Buy land.' When me and the missus were looking around the farm we bought 20 years ago I remember thinking, 'Jimmy Destri can't be wrong.'
That wasn't too long after we wrote 'Country House'. It was Damon [Albarn] lampooning the idea of happily ever after. But, you know, happily ever after is a garden. Buying the farm was actually what saved my life.
The Blur bassist, 54, tells Samuel Fishwick about drinking in the sixth form, his grandad’s gooseberry wine and clinking glasses (almost) with the Queen
My tipple when I was a nipper was Top Deck, a low-alcohol shandy. I remember tooling around on my racing bike in the summer holidays drinking it, thinking I was the big guy.
At Christmas, my grandad used to brew gooseberry wine. Absolutely revolting. But at nine years old, you'll take it.
For some reason, my parents thought it would be prudent to put a bottle of Babycham in me and my sister's Christmas stockings with the walnut and the orange. So I'll always have a soft spot for it. Like music, the food and drink of your teens and childhood is baked into your hard drive for ever.
In sixth form I was an enthusiastic drinker. All the years of rock and roll, and nothing holds a candle to those 18th birthday parties with everyone going full tilt. I'd come in for quadruple chemistry on a Monday with a bit of a sore head just as we were investigating the alcohol family: ethanol, methanol, propanol – all those carbon chains getting longer and more toxic. That was the worst sensory experience of my life.
Someone told me recently that Coca-Cola and milk is a really good hangover cure. It's either the nastiest thing I've ever heard or the best, because it just might work.
We've got five teenagers and they drink watered-down wine. We have always introduced them gently to drinking – with food, in that kind of French approach. The French do have a very civilised approach to drinking.
The most memorable place he's ever had a drink is on top of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, just outside Mexico City
I've had some really disappointing cocktails in snazzy wine bars around the world. But a carafe of wine in the sunshine in a motorway service station in France – there's something glamorous about that.
If I could pluck anyone from history to have a glass with, it would be François Rabelais, who really knew how to enjoy himself. He wrote about food and boozing brilliantly. We'd have a gargantuan feast.
We had my Britpop Brut sparkling wine at Blur's Wembley gigs this year. It's thought that champagne was probably invented in Britain because we had better glass that could withstand the fermentation process. The French claim they invented champagne and brie, but brie was probably invented in Ireland, and champagne was probably invented in Somerset.
I like champagne cocktails. A bellini. Wonderful. Sparkling wine with peach juice. Actually, the peaches are ripe at the minute in the garden. So these are the golden years of climate change.
Britpop Brut sparkling wine by Alex James is available at laithwaites.co.uk
