BIG IDEA | The World’s Biggest Round of Drinks to Celebrate Leeds 2023

Provocations

Whilst having a quiet pint in his local pub Phil Kirby came up with a cracking idea for Leeds 2023; a record breaking round of drinks! Our Shout Leeds.

I genuinely could organise a piss up in a brewery.

It’s my skill set. My forte. My gift. I do nothing better.

It’s even on my CV. In fact, it is my CV; Phil Kirby can organise a piss up in a brewery and is available at short notice for any brewery/piss up opportunities. Remuneration in kind.

This may explain why my annual income resembles in value the loose change rattling around in the charity collection jar found on a bar of any local boozer.

But let’s get back to the main point, piss ups and breweries, the organisation thereof. And this conversation on Twitter about the revised plans for Leeds’ celebration of 2023, now we can’t bid to be European Capital of Culture,

I replied, somewhat flippantly, that £35 million would get me celebrating the whole year too.

Leeds_2023 asked how I would celebrate.

Without a moment’s hesitation I said I’d organise the world’s biggest round of drinks. It was meant as a joke. First thing that came into my head. Not really serious.

But then I got to thinking about it some more. And it’s an interesting possibility. Seriously.

I’ve been a fan of the Leeds 2023 bid from the very start. Been to all the meetings, talked about it to everyone I meet, even plastered distant parts of the city with stickers and planted promotional flags.

I wasn’t really sure how I’d be able get involved in the actual event, however, as I have no artistic talent or cultural credentials to speak of. I don’t paint or draw. I can’t play an instrument. My singing voice makes wine glasses shatter and dogs run away whimpering. When I’m forced onto a dance floor I’m about as graceful and coordinated as a Woodentop (a cultural reference there for the over ’50s). And my acting abilities are put to shame by the average tree stump.

But, give me a brewery and a deadline for a piss up and I’m like a mixture of Simon Rattle at the Proms and Henry Moore with a chisel. Which sounds a bit dangerous now I come to think about it, but you get the gist.

So, the idea of organising the world’s biggest round of drinks…Now that’s my kind of challenge.

There is some quibbling over the exact size of the world’s biggest round, and who organised it (I always thought it was Merle Haggard, who bought one hell of a lot of whiskey for his fans at a bar in Texas after one particularly wild gig, but this is disputed) but it’s in the region of 500 pints of beer, or 40 gallons of whiskey. That’s doable?

Obviously we’d need the booze donated. I certainly don’t have that kind of cash, and you can imagine the hoohah if it was paid for even indirectly by any public body involved in providing and supporting culture in our fair city. But we’ve got six years to hammer out the details. That’s two pints of beer a week. It’s doable. Even for me.

There’ll be plenty of people who will be thinking what a ridiculous idea this is. Ordering a pint or five hundred is not culture. And doesn’t it simply appeal to the lowest denominator. And wouldn’t it encourage drinking (which is a very bad thing indeed!) To all these objections I’d answer, yes!

Yes, it is ridiculous… plenty of the best ideas ever have been ridiculed, so what? It’s still worth doing. Embrace the ridiculous.

Yes, it certainly will appeal to the lowest common denominator, and be simple, if by that you mean it’ll be popular, and everyone will get it, and most people would enjoy it. There’s nothing wrong with common taste. Popularity is not necessarily vulgarity.

And, yes, it would encourage drinking. But not all drinking is bad. Or necessarily alcoholic. Drinking in pubs can be a good thing; it’s where we have our best conversations and cultural exchanges of opinion (who doesn’t go for a drink after the theatre etc? Why else would the Playhouse have a bar? And I bet most people went to the pub after the 2023 meeting at the Town Hall last week, and had more interesting discussions there than in the Victoria Hall.)

Pubs are popular culture.

More people went to the pub over the weekend than went to opera, ballet, cinema, theatre or an art gallery combined. More people went to the pub even than went to see Leeds United lose… my impression is that more people go to the pub in the event of Leeds losing in fact. Getting a round in is the most recognised ritual of cultural togetherness and social solidarity, and we do it both to celebrate a victory and to commiserate with the losers, and this seems a perfect, expressive symbol of what needs to happen after now we know for sure there’s no chance at European Capital of Culture 2023.

We could even invite the good citizens of Dundee, Nottingham, Milton Keynes, Belfast, Londonderry and Strabane – all the other cities disappointed by the decision of the EU not to let any of us compete for the cultural kudos – for a drink too… Wouldn’t that be a nice gesture? We don’t have to be in the same pub, or even in the same city, to organise a round these days. We have the technology.

We could call it Our Shout (#ourshout2023?) or Our Shout Leeds. We are constantly told in Leeds that we don’t shout enough about our city, so why not organise the biggest shout in the world to start off the year of celebrations in 2023?…

It’s a thought?

Anyhow, the pub’s open. I think better with a pint in front of me. My shout. What do you think?

One comment

Comments are closed.