Brace Your Liver: St Patrick is Coming

By Gerry Flynn

Unfortunately once again the powers that be have deemed it acceptable to allow St Paddy’s to fall on a Tuesday, whereas most employers will not deem it acceptable if you fall into your office toilet on Wednesday morning amidst a sea of recycled Guinness.

If more holy figures were immortalised by an annual day of pouring alcohol down your face-hole in broad daylight then we may solve a few of the world’s ailments. So as the sun gradually creeps up into the smoke-stained sky a little bit earlier each morning, we are reminded that winter is passing and all of the Londoners can start to thaw themselves from their subterranean hovels and brace their livers for a city wide celebration on March 17th. If you wish to avoid making a pass at an elderly colleague, liquidating your assets at your desk or doing you very best Exorcist impression, replete with rotating heads and green vomit, then join the rest of enslaved Londoners and celebrate accordingly on Sunday 15th beforehand.

Naturally there’ll be all the family friendly hoity-toity that should satisfy the moderate drinkers, designated drivers and fans of Becks Blue. A full parade of colossal leprechauns made from paper maché and nationalism will stalk the streets on wheels to the sound of Irish songs that no-one can sing sober. Oh and there’s marching bands and Irish sports folks lauding it up around the city too.

Trafalgar Square is probably the place to be if you don’t intend on pumping yourself full of whiskey and fighting the floor – there’s a whole festival chocked full of Irish cultural experiences. Shake hands with the corpse of James Joyce, salute Ryanair pilots and remind yourself how much better life would have been had you been living in Ireland instead of gawping from the smog stained gutters of London. Naturally, it’s all over by 6pm so you’ll find your thirst for culture unquenched – the kind of culture that comes in glasses and makes life better.

In search of aforementioned higher culture, London can seem like a big place – full of terrifying twists, turns and tourists, but at least this means you’re not stuck with the local Spoons when it comes to tasting the Irish.

Waxy O’Connor’s

In no particular order and simply because it comes to mind first, find Waxy O’Connor’s just off Wardour St (if a country hick like me can find it I’m sure you can too, what with your smartphone and early onset arthritis of the thumbs...) for a great place to cram a dram or two down your neck. It’s cheery, looks like Bilbo Baggins’ house and serves enough Irish whiskies to sedate Oscar Wilde.

The Porterhouse

Maybe you’re one of those types whose nose can’t help but turn itself up at the sight of whiskey, aside from questioning what’s wrong with you, your life and ultimately your nose, you should go to The Porterhouse. I was recently introduced to this place and it feels like you’re drinking in the bowels of a colossal pewter submarine. The reality is a bar staffed by the kind of people who will find your bag for you even when you’re falling over them and they have more craft beers than you can shake a hipster’s pet chinchilla at.

The Auld Shillelagh

If you fancy the alcoholic equivalent of a roast dinner in a pint glass, then head to The Auld Shillelagh for quite possibly the most perfectly poured Guinness this side of the Irish Sea. Even a decrepit, mannorexic bag of bones like me is obliged to indulge in at least one pint of the black on St Patrick’s Day and what better place to suffer it than to head to a pub that behaves like the tardis by looking infinitesimally small on entry and then sprawling out much further than you’d have imagined possible. Well worth battling the inhabitants of the underground to get here for St Patrick’s Day.

The Lucky Pig Cocktail Bar

Perhaps you’d rather soothe the harrowing pains of tragic everyday living and celebrate the Irish spirit of intoxication with cocktails. Nothing wrong with that, but I’d rather you just left me the bottle and be done with it. My alcoholism aside, the mixologists of The Lucky Pig Cocktail Bar serve “Craic Cocktails” to honour our snake-shunning, saint-loving, hard-drinking comrades of the old country and they serve them for a fiver each before 8pm – which means even this dishevelled author can afford to get shitfaced in style. All of this coupled with live gypsy-folk music, food and the kind of decor that puts Gatsby to shame.

Flithy’s

So when you inevitably tire of hearing the belligerent bleating of “top o’ da morrrnin’ tew ya” like a rampant parade of aspiring Graham Nortons, head to Filthy’s. Live, loud music that isn’t David Guetta or PitBull and all the while cheap whiskey and pickle juice is poured into every orifice. Head to North London to abuse your liver, to save your ears or fear the wrath of St Paddy’s snakes.

The Toucan

Situated in Soho, it’s by far one of the better places to drink until you forget you’re trapped in London and there is no evac point. Try having one of each whiskey on offer, a feat I imagine to be unimaginable, such is the plethora of bottles you’d need a gut of iron and a wallet of gold to pull it off. Either way, if sampling the rarer whiskies is on your agenda then stop by and make it St Paddy’s all day, all night, until closing. Then sleep in the doorway.

The Tipperary

Well, if you like events like St Patrick’s Day, Christmas and New Year’s Eve for the historical value of it all then head down to Blackfriars for a sip of the black in London’s very first Irish pub. Founded before the iPhone and even before dial-up, this place ought to know how to serve a pint of Guinness – they’ve had a few centuries to perfect the art. Americans be forewarned, make a weak-ass claim to Irish heritage and you may be routinely humiliated or bottled (they sell Guinness in bottles so wimps like me don’t have to drink a whole pint whilst pretending to smile). Enjoy a pint of the past as some of London’s richest twats meander on by.

This is by no means an extensive list of places to go to entertain the idea of being Irish for a weekend, London’s a big place and so you shouldn’t just settle for O’Neill’s because it’s the only Irish pub you can think of. However you celebrate St Patrick’s Day, don’t do it responsibly and please be sure to enjoy it – otherwise you’ll have to wait until next year and you might be dead by then.

Thankfully, we live in a society where we can get ass-over-tit drunk at the drop of a hat, but for just one day we’re obliged to – in the name of the Irish.

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