Yeah, yeah, I know they did this on Celebrity Big Brother last year, but I pipped them to the post a whole bunch of months earlier, so.....
For the inquisitive mind the festive season conjures up many questions: Why do we put charms in the pudding? Is there such a man as Santa Claus? Will he appreciate the mince pies and the glass of sherry you left out? What sort of presents does he give his elves? What did baby Jesus spend his gold on? Why does it only ever snow at Christmas in the movies? Will the corner shop be open? Will aunty Anne go home before Easter this year?
Most remain unanswerable and are handed down like quizzical heirlooms to confuse future generations. We’d argue it’s best to leave it that way, too.
Like parlour games, the big Christmas questions are part of the magic and tradition peculiar to the season.
They’re harmless enough enquiries that need only tax us once a year – not least because to set out to solve them would require painstaking research and Nasa-sized budgets.
And anyway, what would you be left with at the end of your quest to solve a Christmas mystery?
Would you really derive any pleasure from watching the rosy glow drain from the cheeks of an excited tot when you pedantically explain – using a flip chart and laser pointer – that Santa Claus would find it impossible to deliver presents to all the children of the world in one night – even if he just singled out the ones who’d got through the year with an unblemished behaviour record?
No, I suspect you wouldn’t.
But there is one Christmas quandary that wouldn’t necessarily change the spirit of the festival were you to discover its secret.
Namely, how many chocolate liqueurs do you need to eat before you are over the legal limit to drive?
Come on, face it, you’ve always wanted to know.
Chocolate liqueurs are only ever eaten once a year, and with good reason. They’re a complete let down.
Sure, they look good, shaped and wrapped to resemble miniature bottles of booze. But once the foil is off and you’ve bitten through to the globule of syrupy, sugary boozy goodness within, you soon realise there’s a very long way to go before you’ll be standing on the table dancing with a turkey carcass and singing Mistletoe And Wine.
However, I'm convinced that with perseverance and a huge tolerance for chocolate filled with the cheapest booze in Christendom, it can be done.
And here’s how ...
First, purchase three boxes of Marks & Spencer Liqueur Assortments (£4.99) and three disposable breathalyzers (£3.99 from Halfords).
As a test, blow into the breathalyzer bag. The crystals above the blue line in the tube should remain orange. If they turn green at or above the blue line, your blood-alcohol content is 0.8 per cent and you should not be driving or operating heavy machinery such as a JCB or a word processor.
Each box of liqueurs contains 28 Scotch whisky, Amaretto, Irish cream, port, rich cream sherry, brandy and orange curacao (a pokey little number and definitely the strongest of the lot) syrup-centred bottle-shaped chocolates with an average alcohol by volume of four per cent – about the same as the AV of a lager.
How much alcohol it takes to render you dangerous behind the wheel is dependent on a number of factors such as weight, height and gender.
The only real failsafe is that if you have even one alcoholic drink you shouldn’t drive. But is this the case with chocolate liqueurs?
Being 6ft 2in and weighing 17 and a half stone, I find it somewhat hard to believe that a few dozen chocolates could render me senseless.
The results are almost interesting. I proceed to unwrap and eat/drink the liqueurs.
After four, I note that all the flavours taste the same.
After eight, my throat’s become claggy and my teeth hurt. I am, however, still able to drive home without fear of arrest.
After 28, I have lost the will to live and wish to seek solace in real booze. But I persevere. I have another 56 miniature bottles of syrupy boozy gloop to go.
By the last choc of box number two, I’ve started to slur to the rest of the features desk that I used to be in the SAS and I’d gladly take all of them on anytime they like. This, I think, is the chocolate talking – time perhaps for another breath test.
I don’t feel drunk. Just sick. But get this – the crystals in the next breath test are definitely turning green and edging towards the blue line, meaning that I’m, well, sober. But possibly on the way to being slightly merry. One more box for the road.
Like Cat Stevens didn’t say, the third box of chocolate liqueurs is the deepest. I feel sick to my very soul and am starting to hallucinate. Tiny chocolate bottles of Amaretto are dancing in formation on the table in front of me to the tune of the 1812 Overture.
Wee bottles of foil-wrapped port are telling me to stab my boss with a carrot. “Do it, do it, do it!” they scream as I desperately fumble around my desk for root vegetables.
I’m concerned that my colleagues are looking at me strangely and bite off the top of another liqueur to dull the pain and ease the paranoia.
After 84 liqueurs, I surely must be over the limit. I blow up a breathalyzer balloon. The green crystals are just touching the blue line, meaning there is some alcohol in my bloodstream and I’ve finally found the answer to the original question.
Yes, you can get very, very, very slightly inebriated if you eat three giant boxes of chocolate liqueurs. In the same way that you can from drinking a can of Fosters.
I am nowhere near drunk but I do think I am going to be sick.
Happy Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment