Top 10 silly stories of the month
Source: the drinks business
by Lauren Eads
24th June, 2015
While business news and industry analysis is our bread and butter, a portion of our online coverage is intended to simply offer some light relief during a long day, or at the very least raise a smile.
Here, we round up some of the most silly, entertaining and down-right bizarre stories of the month, which relate to the drinks industry in their own special way.
Let it never be said that the drinks business takes itself too seriously.
Scroll through for a selection of our most off-piste stories of the month…
Cereal cafes, food served on shovels, from plant pots and on a shoe, the “hipster” penchant for serving food and drink in bizarre and occasionally inconvenient ways continues to defy belief. Earlier this month it emerged that at least two bars in Paris were serving wine and cocktails in baby bottles, described by one commentator as a “hipster fad too far”.
As reported by The Telegraph, Instagrammer “theothernicryan” snapped a photo showing adults in a bar near Montmartre drinking from baby bottles.
“A little restaurant full of people drinking actual drinks from baby bottles,” he wrote. “Stuff of nightmares this. Imagine meeting your mates and getting there late and not knowing what the restaurant was all about and seeing all your adult friends drinking like babies and just carrying on like it was completely normal.”
The Telegraph discovered it was the “Refuge des Fondus” bar which serves its “lowest-end table wine” in baby bottles.
A wannabe Batman was scolded by the internet when he decided to step in after he found a man passed out at the wheel of his car with the engine running.
Instead of calling the authorities the self-proclaimed “drunk knight”, a reference to Batman, hid the man’s keys and left a note on his dashboard telling him where they were.
It read: “I found you passed out drunk with your car running, so I hid your keys under the atlas in your back seat”, read the note. “I hope you get home safe. I’m not your hero. I’m our silent guardian. a watchful protector – the Drunk Knight.”
An image of the note was posted on image sharing site Imgur. However while the man thought he was doing a good deed, many social media users slammed him for not reporting the unconscious man to the police.
One user wrote: “Should have called the cops. This the type of idiot that’s going to wake up in an hour or two and drive off.”
A landlord who joked about obesity and the death of Orville entertainer Keith Harris on his pub’s billboards incurred the wrath of residents living in the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
Mick Quinn, of the Fleming Arms pub, regularly writes humorous quips on a sandwich board to “raise a smile”. However some of his recent compositions led to a slap on the wrist by police.
Verging into the realms of black humour, recent headlines included “‘fat people are harder to kidnap! Stay safe! Eat lots here”, while another referenced the death of entertainer Keith Harris, known for his sketch routines with puppet bird Orville. Three days after the entertainer’s death the pub put up a sign which read: “Keith Harris RIP, Orvil KFC.” Another made fun of a nearby town ahead of Father’s Day, implying that is has a problem with incest reading: “Happy Brother’s Day Wroxall”.
Mr Quinn, who has run the pub for the last 12 years, said the boards were just harmless pub banter.
A man nearly swallowed a slug after it found its way into his pint while dining at a branch of Harvester in Haywards Heath.
Grant Knight described the slimy incident to The Express, telling the paper that he at first thought the rogue mollusc was a “big slice of onion”.
Feeling a slimy lump in his mouth after taking his first swig, Knight realised to his horror that it was a slug.
The restaurant apologised, giving Mr Knight’s party a 33% discount on their bill.
An eye-catching billboard advertising a Costa Rican beer brand caught the attention of drivers, but not for the right reasons. Beer brand Republica Parrillera Pilsen erected a billboard in Costa Rica which was mocked on social media after users pointed out its startling resemblance to the male form, when viewed from the opposite direction than intended.
Perfectly appropriate from the front, the advert depicts a sausage on a skewer alongside an image of a beer bottle. However drivers approaching the sign from the other direction are treated to a far more eye-catching view.
Beer lovers were invited to strip off and drink up at a beer and jazz festival organised by the Naturist Foundation. Due to be held this weekend, the event will feature live jazz performances and more than 20 real ales and ciders, as well as a sauna and swimming pool where “nudity is mandatory”.
The event is open to all, including those of a non-nude persuasion, however getting naked is strongly encouraged.
Day tickets and weekend camping packages are available for the event, which will run from Thursday, 25 June to Sunday 28 June.
Similar events have been held in the US with a nudist resort in Pennsylvania known to host an annual “Bare Beach Beer Bash” where nudity is not only encouraged, but required.
There’s not many things that will shift a pub-goer from their pint after a long day, but a swarm of bees will do the trick.
The Yard bar in Cardiff was forced to close its beer garden after it became overrun by a swarm of bees, forcing punters onto the streets. Customers were ushered out of the garden after the swarm descended “from nowhere”, with pub landlord erecting a sign that read “Bee Aware!”.
A beekeeper was drafted in to help reclaim the garden, eventually coaxing the queen bee into a hive which caused the others to follow suit. Nobody was stung during the incident.
A tiny hedgehog has been coaxed back to health after it was discovered passed out in a gutter having downed a bottle of discarded advocaat.
Resembling the aftermath of a particularly heavy night out, creature was found by the Dierentehuis Arnhem en Omstreken animal rescue center in Holland.
“We think maybe it was the egg that attracted him to the bottle and he got really drunk”, it said. “Or perhaps he got some of the liquid on himself and he was trying to lick it off.”
The liqueur is made with eggs, sugar and brandy and normally has a 20% abv, more than enough to knock out the tiny hedgehog.
As far as drunken antics go, getting arrested for illegally catching 122 sea bass is not exactly your typical night out. But that is exactly what happened to one man after a night out on the lash resulted in an epic one-man fishing marathon.
Environmental Police from Massachusetts spotted the man’s catch while patrolling a canal in Boston, discovering a haul of 122 black sea bass. In an apparent drunken stupor, the man had decided to take his recreational fishing boat out for a spin, reeling in a mountain of bass that would have put most professional fisherman to shame.
Unfortunately, just eight bass are permitted to be caught in this particular canal due by a single fisherman at any time due to fears of overfishing, with this man’s otherwise impressive fishing feat earning him a criminal record.
All of the fish were donated to charity.
One of the most bizarre stories of the month was the launch of a range of whiskies that claimed to have been “body blended” by porn stars.
Whisky By X was founded in 2014 after the brains behind the operation decided that “something was missing” in the world of whisky. Each of brand’s two 12-year-old blends have apparently been “body-blended” by either Tori Black or Joy Van Velsen, both big names in the porn industry, with each consumer given the choice as to which female has got friendly with your whisky.
It is not clear exactly how the process of body-blending is achieved. However its producers promise that, “not only will the quality of our whisky make your heart beat faster, the thought of the same whisky touching the body of the woman of your dreams will leave you speechless”.
We are yet to be convinced.