Here's a little game we can play. Who's your favorite drunk from the annals of time, real and/or imaginary, and why?

Mine's Winston Churchill. Any man who can write and speak as he did, completly soused, is a great man.

And while the most a drunk can usually hope to send to their graves is a carload, Churchill sent a generation off while making them proud to go! Bonus.

As for fictional drunks, Bacchus wins hands down. His followers were the guys that made sure that the parties in Athens were never dull. Also, any god whom you worship by holding a drunken orgy is a good god in my book. Sure, Jesus'd give you wine from the Rhine, but Bacchus didn't care if it made you covet your neighbor's wife.

I vote for W.C. Fields. I don't think there has to be a reason, it's W.C. Fields "my little chickadee".

In Response to Rich (#8507):

When I first read the topic W.C. Fields was the first thing I thought of. So now he has too votes. I'm sure he's not the most famous drunk, but he's the only drunk I read a book about. His life left me spechless when I was 10. Books are so much more shocking when your younger.

Hands down: Historical Drunk == U. S. Grant. Union Army General who won the Civil War for the North, a war hero who became one of the worst presidents (i.e., ineffectual) this nation ever had. Of course, when a General, Lincoln was asked about his drinking, to which Lincoln replied, "I'll find out what brand of whisky he drinks, and send a case to each of my other generals." When close to his death, Grant sent for people to take down his memoirs, as he was going to dictate them. He dictated for three days, almost without pause. No repeating himself, no backing up to cover something he missed -- he just dictated his entire life, and died shortly thereafter.

Fictional drunk? Farnham, from Diablo [blizzard.com].

The research i've done on Churchill points to a conclusion that he wasn't usually drunk. True, he always had a drink with him, but most of his drinks were quite watered down and he wasn't known to chug them.

Finnegan’s wake. I know it was not a "person" so to say, but it is sorta the symbolic combination of not only my roommate at times but of every random drunk person I see who likes to babble incomprehensible nonsense at me.

I think Finnegan's wake counts as a fictional character, but if it dosent I would have to say angry from the seven dwarves. I'm not sure if he is actually a drunk, but I perfer to live in my socially elitest world and demonize angry little people. Oh, first post, btw. Board looks nice.

Without a doubt the most impressive drunk is Homer J Simpson, and no reason is needed. His antics are thouroughly documented and picking one specific scene or episode is a lost cause. I throw down the gauntlet to anyone to get more than 20 people to agree on one scene!

In Response to Gentoo666 (#8669):

Falstaff.

He had a beer named after him, so until I see "Finnegan's Wake Pale Ale", "Winston Stout" or "Homer Lite" he's my pick.

And no, homebrew names don't count (I made a pretty decent FW Dark ale a few years back)

In Response to lemur666 (#8732):

Chalk one up for Homer! (I knew I kept those beer mailings for a reason.)

From Real Beer Page Email, Dec. 2001

The producers of the animated television series the Simpsons have forced a New Zealand brewery to stop using the name "Duff" for the beers it sells. 20th Century Fox threatened Duffs Brewery in Dunedin with legal action unless it changed its name. The company changed its name to McDuffs. Brewery owner Gavin Duff told the Otago Daily Times:
"I always thought the letter might come one day. What it boiled down to was small guys like us don't have enough money to fight big guys like
them."
In 1996, the South Australian Brewing Co. was banned from selling "Duff Beer" after 20th Century Fox took it to court.

I can't believe this didn't occur to me earlier, but i just remembered Patsy Stone from "Absolutely Fabulous". Now there's a woman who can do some amazing things while spending her entire life in a haze of Bolly and marijuana!

The late Queen Mother... she was a G&T fiend, and nice little old lady at that!

totally agree with you on the churchill, he was quoted as saying (when a lady friend said "you are drunk.") he replied, "Yes, I am drunk, and you are ugly, but tomarrow I will be sober."

In Response to Teledildonix (#9065):

i miss that show....

well, if anyone here has seen cannibal! the musical (the best movie of all time), or more specifically, the commentary on the dvd, i'd say all of the people on the commentary. they all get really drunk doing the commentary and its pretty funny. does that count?

In Response to mookypootpoot (#9095):

does that count?

Certainly, that counts. If they've provided public entertainment, then it's fair to label them as somewhat "historical"...eventually. And so if they're your favorite, then that's cool. I've never seen this DVD you mention. What parts of their commentary were really funny? What made you laugh or got you excited?

It always seemed like the funniest bits of Patsy Stone's schtick (played incredibly well by Joanna Lumley) were a result of her perfect deadpan capabilities, no matter how schnookered she might be. In real life, this is very hard to manage; so as fictional character, it's a bit easier to pull off. I've never known any drunks in real life who could maintain that kind of alternating cleverness/numbness.

Real drunks tend to sink into sad states of clumsiness, and become emotional and functional oafs after a while. Patsy had her occasional vicious verbal outbursts toward Saffron, but to everyone else she could be the model of composure and dignity, even when she'd sucked down a few bottles of Bollinger's and Stolichnaya, and had some pills and joints and powders as chasers.

Perhaps dry wit and sarcasm can be made even funnier by attempting to produce them while tipsy. Let me know if you pull it off :-)

In Response to Teledildonix (#9109):

Perhaps dry wit and sarcasm can be made even funnier by attempting to produce them while tipsy. Let me know if you pull it off :-)

No, from many years of experience, I've found dry wit and sarcasm are not funnier at all. Maybe I'm just not doing it right or something, but I just don't get laughs so much as bruises and broken bones.

If I need to produce laughs while tipsy, I just try philosophy.

In Response to snipergirl (#9066):

So true. Apparently she was interviewed by the BBC around her 100th birthday, and when she was asked what kept her going, she waved a glass at the interviewer and said "oh, 10 or so of these a day"

Ernie Hemmingway.
  A good, solid, drunk.