SIMON HOGGART
Ltast year the Mini-bar offered o provide all your bubbles or Christmas in a single convenient case. This proved so successful that we've done it again, working once more with John Armit Wines, the famous London wine merchant. The recent strength of the euro means we've had to adjust the contents slightly, but we've still managed to create what I think is a perfect selection for the holidays
at a mere £125, delivery included. Of course you can buy individual wines by the case if you want, and there's a very special offer on one of the world's great champagnes.
For your pre-Christmas drinks party, or just family glugging, there are eight bottles of the Prosecco La Riva dei Frati(') which was a big hit last year. This is a light, frothy wine with a mousse of bubbles, which means that you open it with a corkscrew. It's aromatic, has a gentle, fruity, elderflower taste, and is just perfect for kickstarting any festivities. Also ideal for making Kir Royale, or to blend with peach juice for a delectable Bellini.
Then we've included three bottles of Armit's own brand champagne(?) for anytime drinking. This is no supermarket gener,
ic 'poo; made by Boizel in Epernay, it was named as one of the finest marques by Decanter magazine this year. 'All the lift and elegance of much grander Blanc de Blanes; matures gracefully, becoming more creamy after one year, and a little nutty
, after two, but never losing freshness. Steven Spurrier named it his 'best sparkling wine'.
For the dinner itself you could slurp greedily the bottle of Pol Roger White Foil NV Extra Dry(3). Pol Roger was Churchill's favourite champagne, a fact they still trade on, and it really is one of the greatest names in the region. A superb, classical champagne.
Anyone who buys any case can also, if they wish, acquire a magnificent extra: a magnum of Louis Roederer Brut of the 1995 vintage(5) for just £70. This was Tsar Nicholas's favourite tipple. The first 20 readers to order one of these will also receive a free pair of exclusive Louis Roederer champagne pliers, one of those branded gizmos which will actually enhance your standing with the neighbours. I expect.
Delivery as ever is free. I would get orders in pretty quickly given the coming rush. raise funds for his defence, attracting 20,000 paying guests to a meeting in Manchester. People mobbed him at the railway station and at his hotels, cheered him down the street and paid for Tichborne bonds which they would cash in on his return to his rightful inheritance. Gullibility is clearly some kind of aphrodisiac, enhancing the pleasure of communal excitement, a gang-bang of those brain cells wherein dreams are fashioned. Throughout it all the butcher remained phlegmatic.
He was indifferent, too, to Kenealy's insinuations of his physical shortcomings. The butcher had a penis which retracted into a hole, like a shy tortoise, and he was required to demonstrate this to the jurors in the robing-room. They might as well have been discussing his hat-size, says the author. Roger Tichborne had also been somewhat deformed in this regard, being teased as 'Small Cock' by his fellow carabineers. Quod erat demonstrandum. It is uproarious, to me at least, that the man thus humiliated in court was alleged to bear the surname Castro.
Well, it turned out he wasn't Tichborne or Castro, but a man originally from the East End of London by the name of Arthur Orton, as he eventually confessed after serving his prison term. This is what his detractors had been trying to establish for six years, and what the Tichborne estate had spent £90,000 in costs to prove, a sum which might, in 1870, have happily bought them 90,000 terraced houses instead of being squandered on puncturing a prank. It finally appeared the claimant did have some emotion after all, when he admitted that the guilty verdict was a huge relief after what had started as a schoolboy-level dare grew into an all-engulfing nightmare. 'The story really built itself,' he said, 'and in that way it grew so large that I really could not get out of it.' What had seemed like a wild, bold, extravagant scam had been nothing of the kind.; the whole mess issued from a torpid lack of imagination.
The story itself is but the scaffolding of a good book, and a bad writer could cause it to collapse into tedium. Robyn Annear is a very good writer indeed. She treats the material with panache, vigour, a sense of fun, and that warmth of humour which it richly merits. She also places some choice footnotes with tangential historical information. One of these made me sit up. I dimly remember in childhood being entertained by a film of a diminutive comedian called Harry Relph, also known as 'Little Tich'. I had assumed the nickname derived from his height of four feet, but no, it was by comparison with the person he shared billing with in the travelling circus, namely the Tichborne claimant, whose girth would entitle him to be called 'Big Tich'. Thus the Tichborne affair has found its way into our speech, for no small person had ever been called Tich before.
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