BRENDAN BEHAN

Being an unspecified number in an occasional series of Favourite Drunkards - perhaps this needs qualification - I am fond of several drunks, or alcoholics and have worked with chronic alcoholics and addicts for the past 15+ years or so and whilst they are amongst the most difficult addict to work with, we can only feel the deepest sorrow for those taken too early like Behan at 41 and Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac etc etc and hope we learn something from their truly dreadful example. The key it seems is knowing when to stop but the disease of alcoholism appears to take this faculty away. I am one of the lucky ones . . . . . 

Today is the birthday of Irish playwright, poet and IRA supporter Brendan Behan. Dead at 41 through the drink, he was a slave to alcohol all his life and back when being an alcoholic was considered entertainment he was to prove beyond all help. Diagnosed late after suffering six years of diabetes, his favourite tipple being the literally fatal combination of champagne and sherry. He wrote:

"Never throw stones at your mother,

You'll be sorry for it when she's dead,Never throw stones at your mother,Throw bricks at your father instead."

Seen here with the great British painter Lucien Freud his most famous witicism was

 "I am a drinker with a writing problem"