At the height of Bond-mania during the Cold War in the 1960s, some sixty applications arrived every week at the desk of Lieut.-Col. William (“Bill”) Tanner, Chief of Staff at the British Secret Service. That might not seem much in today’s money considering how many billions of texts and emails randomly ping across the world, but these letters were long-considered, deftly-composed, neatly hand-written in the applicant’s best script, and then posted via mail in an envelope with a stamp purchased from the post office (closed Sundays, half-day Wednesdays and Saturdays) to arrive a day or two later on Lieut.-Col. Tanner’s desk.

The writers of these letters were not applying for “clerical or menial grades” but wrote in the hope of being trained as an agent in the “00 Section, the one whose members are licensed to kill.”

Unfortunately for these well-intentioned young men and women, this was not the way by which the Secret Service recruited its spies. Lieut.-Col. Tanner wrote back to each hopeful applicant to say so—but this “went against the grain. So much keen ambition and enthusiasm shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste.”

When he retired from the Service, Tanner decided to do something about this. He compiled The Book of Bond or Every Man His Own 007, which contained “a mine of information for would-be Bonds.”

Of course, Lieut.-Col. William (“Bill”) Tanner (retired) was a fictional creation—the nom de plume of that brilliant writer Kingsley Amis, who was a long-time fan of Bond and his author Ian Fleming. Using Fleming’s novels as his source material, Amis compiled “[a] glorious [tongue-in-cheek] guide to easy Do-It-Yourself Bondmanship…how to look…what to wear, eat, drink and smoke…”

Under the opening chapter on “Drink,” Amis listed James Bond’d favorite cocktails, which included “The Vesper” as featured Fleming’s first Bond novel Casino Royale. This is a “dry martini” served in “a deep champagne goblet” as Bond described it:

“...Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel…..”

Bond describes this concoction as his “own invention,” one that he planned to patent.

“I neve have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be a large and very strong and very cold and very well-made, I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”

But note, Bond’s favorite tipple can no longer be made with Kina Lillet or Lillet Vermouth, as they are no longer produced—see below.
 

 
In The Book of Bond, Amis detailed the recipes to Bond’s five favorite cocktails as follows:

From ‘Thunderball,’ Ch. 14.

The Old-Fashioned

Made as follows—you don’t do the making, of course, but you should know how: Dissolve a level teaspoon of castor sugar in the minimum quantity of boiling water. Add three dashes of Angostura bitters, squeeze of fresh orange-juice, large measure of bourbon whiskey. Mix. Pour on to ice-cubes in short tumbler. Stir. Garnish with slice of orange and Maraschino cherry.

From ‘Doctor No,’ Ch. 14.’

The Martini.

Made with vodka, medium dry—say four parts of vodka to one of dry vermouth—with a twist of lemon peel. To be shaken with ice, not, as is more usual, stirred with ice and strained.

The full-dress, all-out version of this is

From ‘Casino Royale,’ Ch. 7.

The Vesper.

You will have to instruct the bartender or waiter specifically as follows:

Take three measures of Gordon’s gin, one measure of vodka, half a measure of Lillet vermouth. Shake very well until ice-cold. Serve in a deep champagne goblet with large slice of lemon peel.

...

When the drink arrives, take a long sip and tell the barman it’s excellent, but would be even better made with a grain-base vodka than a potato-base one.

i) The original recipe calls for Kina Lillet in place of Lillet vermouth. The former is flavoured with quinine and would be very nasty in a Martini. Our founder slipped up here. If Lillet vermouth isn’t available, specify Martini Rossi dry. Noilly Prat is good for many purposes, but not for Martinis.

ii) Make sure the barman is very ignorant, or very deferential, or very both, before talking about vodka bases. Potato vodka is the equivalent of poteen, or bath-tub gin, and getting hold of a bottle of it through ordinary commercial channels wouldn’t be easy even on the far side of the Iron Curtain.

More after the jump…

 
Dennis Wheatley was the eldest of three children born into a prosperous middle-class family in 1897. His father was a successful wine merchant based in Mayfair, London. After serving in the First World War, where he was gassed in a chlorine attack during the battle of Passchendaele, Wheatley joined the family business in 1919. He proved highly successful as a vintner.

He sold liqueurs and ultra-rare brandies, and at its peak the business counted not only the Duke of York (later King George VI) but a total of ‘three Kings, twenty-one Imperial, Royal and Serene Highnesses, twelve British Ducal Houses, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a score of millionaires’ among its clientele.

The work allowed him to socialize with those of a higher standing, which gave Wheatley pretensions towards a more aristocratic lifestyle. However, in 1931 during the Great Depression, he was almost undone by near fraudulent activities which badly over-extended the family business. Facing near bankruptcy, Wheatley quickly sold the business. He then decided to write his way out of debt and possible financial ruin.

Wheatley’s first novel Three Inquisitive People was accepted by the publisher Hutchison but was not published until later in his career. The book introduced one of his most famous characters, the Duke de Richleau. He also presented his publishers with a second novel The Forbidden Territory which became his first published novel. This book brought him instant success and was reprinted seven times during its first seven weeks in 1933.

The following year, he wrote The Devil Rides Out, which cleverly mixed the crime thriller with a story of the occult. Wheatley had read extensively about esoteric beliefs and various occult practices but relied on contacts he met through the politician Tom Driberg like Aleister Crowley, the Reverend Montague Summers, and Rollo Ahmed, to bring his knowledge up to date.

The Devil Rides Out was hailed as “the best thing of its kind since Dracula” and firmly established Wheatley as the “#1 thriller writer.” Since its publication, The Devil Rides Out has never been out of print and was made into a highly successful movie with Christopher Lee as Richleau and Charles Gray as the Crowley-inspired Mocata in 1968.

Over the next forty years, Wheatley wrote 65 novels and sold an estimated 70 million books. His tremendous success allowed him to cultivate the image of the distinguished gentleman he had long desired. To some, like the novelist Anthony Powell, this image seemed at odds to some of the “conscious drivel” Wheatley produced as a writer. His books mixed far-fetched comic book adventures with utterly gripping plotlines. Though his work was sometimes denounced for its ridiculous characters and racist stereotypes, Wheatley was often sought out by writers like Powell to give advice on plot structure and narrative.
 

That ole devil himself: Wheatley with his books and his war medals. (Photo by Alan Warren).
 
Despite a reputation for writing racy occult novels like The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter, and The Satanist, and to an extent some of his more crackpot right-wing ideas (like a belief of an inevitable Communist revolution in swinging sixties England), Wheatley had a taste for the finer things in life. He kept an impressive library of books (mainly classics and works of non-fiction) and a well-stocked cellar of wine. His knowledge of the drinks trade led to him being commissioned to write The Seven Ages of Justerini’s, a history of the respected wine merchants Justerini & Brooks in 1949. This book included recipes for some of Wheatley’s favorite cocktails like this one for Nectarine Gin, which is an overly sweet recipe as “Wheatley had a notoriously sweet tooth and liked to serve it to as an after-dinner liqueur at Grove Place, his country house in Lymington, Hampshire.”:

Nectarine Gin

Prick your Nectarines all over with a fork and put them in an open vessel. Pour upon them as much Gin as will cover the fruit, and add a quarter-of-a-pound of soft white sugar with each quart of Gin. Cover the vessel with a cheesecloth and leave to stand, Give the contents a stir twice or thrice in the next forty-eight hours, then strain off the liquor and bottle it.

He also had one for a “meaty” Bloody Mary:

Dennis Wheatley’s Bloody Mary

One nip Tomato Juice, one Sherry glass Vodka-Smirnoff, one Sherry glass Campbells Beef Bouillon, one nip Worcester Sauce, half glass- Lime or Lemon- fresh, ice- shake until froth appears- serve.

I know what I’ll be drinking tonight while reading The Devil and All His Works.
 

 
Via the Greasy Spoon.
 

 
For the benefit of future generations, the 1988 cookbook Rock ‘N’ Roll Cuisine collected the recipes for Rod Stewart’s “SANDWHICH [sic] FOR HANGOVER,S [sic],” George Michael’s risotto, Ian Astbury’s “dangerously spicy” chickpeas, Debbie Harry’s nutty shrimp, Ozzy’s chicken curry, and so on.

Ronnie James Dio’s contribution, set in blackletter type, was something like the bill of fare for a feudal baron’s Christmas feast: roast suckling pig with bread sauce, served with cups from the wassail bowl. Not just any wassail bowl, either, but “The Wassail, prepared by Charles Dickens for the entertainment, on Christmas Eve, at the Charity of Richard Watts, Rochester, Kent, England, 1854.” People needed this kind of hot, sugary booze back then. I bet a few good slugs out of this here wassail bowl could make a person forget all about the symptoms of smallpox, typhus and the measles, not to mention the cares of the 10-hour factory shift.

Wassail Bowl

1 quart ale
1/4 ounce ground nutmeg
1/4 ounce grated ginger
1/4 ounce grated cinnamon
1/2 bottle sherry
2 slices toasted bread (1/2 inch thick)
1 lemon, juice & peel
sugar to taste
2 well-baked apples

Put ale in sauce pan and cook gently till it foams, then stir in the spices, add the sherry, lemon peel and juice with sugar. When sugar is dissolved, set pan aside on stove for twenty minutes to infuse. Then warm up, pour into punch bowl, let the toast and apples float in this and serve in cups.

Continues after the jump…

 
Tokyo-based photographer Lee Chapman has been documenting life in Japan for almost two decades. Originally from England, Chapman went to Japan on a one-year work contract to teach English at a language school. He now works as an English teacher at a local high school—which means he has plenty of free time to take photographs.

Chapman finds it easier to wander around Tokyo with a camera compared to say, London, where he says “the authorities are clamping down on photography in the public sphere.” As an outsider he finds himself attracted to subjects that many indigenous photographers might overlook. He has no interest in covering the “fashion girls of Harajuku and Shibuya” or the quirky trends so beloved by western fashion magazines. Instead, Chapman focuses on the areas that a lot of people don’t see—the old, the homeless, the people who live on the periphery of society.

Among the many subjects Chapman has covered is a series of photographs of drunks passed out on the city’s sidewalks, doorways, bars, and train stations. Being passed-out, stone-cold drunk on Tokyo’s streets is a common and accepted sight. Whether through an excess of alcohol or mere tiredness, businessmen in dapper suits can often be found lying spreadeagled next to heavy metal freaks and regular low-rent run-of-the-mill alcoholics.

Check more of Lee Chapman’s superb work here.
 

 

 
More of Lee Chapman’s photographs, after the jump…

 
Fallen Furniture specializes in making cool art deco-ish furniture and wall hangings out of old airplane parts. They have a wall clock made from a piece of window fuselage from a Boeing 747 and a chair that was once a Boeing 747 engine cowling.

Their coolest piece is called simply “the Bomb,” and it’s an ultra-sleek, ultra-fancy drinks cabinet that stands more than eight feet tall—made from an R.A.F. MK1 practice cluster bomb.
 

Standing more than eight feet tall and weighing 600 pounds, the mirror-polished Cluster Bomb Drinks Cabinet is a truly unique piece of furniture. Behind the gleaming 1970s missile fuselage, three glass shelves revolve around a gold-plated spindle; while in the base, a sliding platform built from lacquered American walnut conceals an armoury of custom-made cocktail utensils. With its potent fusion of industrial heritage and high-end craftsmanship, this breathtaking cabinet is without equal.

 
You can own one of these beauts for a paltry $53,000.
 

 

 
More gorgeous pics of this unusual item after the jump…....

C4 News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy and The Fall’s Mark E. Smith

Last night before I turned the computer off, I saw on Twitter that The Fall’s Mark E. Smith would be appearing on Channel 4 News. I made a note to myself to google this when I woke up as surely someone would have posted it by the time I rose. I was not disappointed.

An appearance by Smith on the nightly news or a sports show can often be pretty insane as everyone knows. And while the rocker is being condemned on social media this morning for some somewhat insensitive remarks he made about how all the Syrian refugees seem to be young males, it’s not that aspect of Smith’s appearance that I want to call your attention to, but rather to point out how utterly indecipherable what he’s saying—or trying to say—truly is. I normally have no trouble understanding even a thick Mancunian accent, but when Smith is speaking, it’s the matter of not merely a particularly heavy Manc accent but lots and lots (and lots) of lager. Is he slurring his words? Hell, I’m not really sure that he’s even speaking actual words. Or trying to.

And neither are the close captions that Channel 4 kindly provided convinced of this. I highly recommend turning them on. The funny thing is even when the translation is WIDELY OFF TARGET—as it is throughout the entire thing when Smith is talking—the words still come through as vintage Mark E. Smith-style angsty Cubist poetry.
 

 
For instance, “so the Fall were formed” reads “farmer farmer” on screen. “I wanted some discordant stuff—and repetition” is translated as “proud to discard and stuff and a replica weapons system.” A deaf viewer would be perplexed, but then again so would anyone else be perplexed. That dada quality is what makes it so much fun to watch MES in action. It’s just a pity this wasn’t a live interview.

But, wow, I mean, holy shit is this dude disheveled. Talk about the mileage on that body! He’s only 58, but looks like he’s 94.

The whole way he presents himself is very much like a drunk, semi-brain damaged Stephen Hawking, isn’t it?

Er… enjoy. Remember: DO turn on the captions. The new Fall EP Wise Ol’ Man will be released on February 19th by Cherry Red Records.
 

Stick ‘em up!: A cop with a gun.

Watching too many Jimmy Cagney movies as a child made me think a gangster’s life as a possible career option. I could picture myself running of a numbers racket, or selling moonshine, riding the running board while blasting the competition. Even the gangsters’ names were exotic: Al Capone, Bugsy Moran, John Dillinger, Tony Accardo. Then I turned six—discovered soccer and the fancy footwork of Jimmy “Jinky” Johnstone and Harry Hood which made me think playing for Celtic would be a better choice.

Gangsters and Grifters is a book of photographs compiled from the extensive crime archive of the Chicago Tribune. The book contains a collection of rarely seen photos of infamous gangsters, murderers, thieves, pickpockets, bandits, molls as well as the cops who brought them to justice from 1900-1950. These vintage glass-plate and acetate negatives captured many legendary moments in criminal history—from which this small selection has been culled.
 

Al Capone making an appearance in court, date unknown. Capone had a seven year reign of terror on the streets of Chicago during the 1920s. He was believed to have been responsible for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He was eventually busted for tax evasion and sentenced to gaol. He suffered from tertiary syphilis and died of cardiac arrest in 1947.
 

Cops examine guns suspected of being used in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, when six mobsters where shot dead—you’d have thought the cops might have been grateful. One of the shooters was thought to be mob enforcer Tony Accardo.
 

Prohibition helped the rise of gangsters like Al Capone, who ran hooch and illegal drinking dens. Here cops inspect some of the alcohol Capone and his associates were running.
 

Capone on another visit to court.
 
 
More vintage crime shots, after the jump…

 
You know when you need to be covert with your boozy needs? What about a baby doll flask? Seriously, your friends and family won’t be the wiser. Okay, of course they’ll know ‘cause A) you don’t have a goddamned baby and B) it’s plastic for pete’s sake. And C) you’re as drunk as a skunk sucking on a plastic baby head.

Perhaps it’s best suited for smuggling hooch into sporting events or concerts? You know, from afar?

 
The flask, created by Simon Philion, is called Cool Baby. It’s on Kickstarter right now with a goal of $70,000. So far it’s reached around $10k.

Below, an instructional video on when and how to use Cool Baby:

 
via Death and Taxes

 
As a connoisseur of disgustingly sweet margaritas—with a young adulthood lubricated by MD 20/20 not so far back in my rear view mirror, no less—I’m not one to turn up my nose at a dessert-oriented booze-stuff. Alcoholic Oreos however, are clearly a monument to man’s arrogance and shall someday be punished by an angry God. This sinister aberration—the unholy creation of a mad scientist, no doubt—is made by combining the liquor of your choice with Oreo pudding mix, scraping the filling off some Oreos, and spooning the alcoholic mixture betwixt the newly emptied cookie halves.

After that, I suppose you just start wolfing down these bad boys like you’ve given up on life—or maybe just cut out the middleman and just throw them directly into the toilet?

Either way, it’s a race between diabetes and alcohol poisoning—may the best death win!
 

 
Via Foodbeast

 
This almost looks like a set-up for a Jägermeister commercial: old man at a rave (in a cape?) is given some firewater, goes ape.

This is how I’d like to roll when I get to this geezer’s age…
 

 
As You Wish, Cary Elwes’ new book about the making of The Princess Bride, came out on October 14—two weeks ago it made the #3 slot on the New York Times Bestseller List for Hardcover Nonfiction (it’s since slipped to #11). Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Patton and Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl were the only books keeping it from the top slot; by comparison, Elwes’ memoir was a far more surprising success. It turns out that people sure do love The Princess Bride. A lot.

The hand of Andre the Giant, cradling a regular-sized can of beer
 
And where The Princess Bride is being discussed, tales of Andre the Giant cannot be far behind. Elwes relates some incredible stories about the wrestler’s mind-boggling capacity for alcohol:
 

André was due to have an operation after he wrapped the movie. But until then the only medication he could take to deal with the pain was alcohol. Now, if you think André could eat, you should have seen him drink. It was legendary. Word had it that even before he developed the injury he could drink a hundred beers in one sitting. According to some estimates his average daily consumption of alcohol was a case of beer, three bottles of wine, and a couple of bottles of brandy. But what I witnessed was something quite different. At meal times, besides the incredible amount of food he ate, I noticed that rather than using a regular glass, André drank from a beer pitcher, which looked a lot like a regular glass in his hands anyway. In reality it was forty ounces of alcohol, which he nicknamed “The American”—usually some combination of hard and soft liquor and whatever else he felt like mixing it with that day. I should point out that not once did I notice any sign of the alcohol affecting him, which made sense given his size. …

It turns out that same night after the read-through André decided he would sample some of the finest vintage aperitifs and liqueurs from the cellars of the prestigious hotel and ended up closing the bar. When it came to last call he got up to leave but never made it to the front door, instead passing out cold in the lobby. The night porter was called, who in turn summoned security, who in turn rang engineering. Manpower was apparently needed. Yet, despite their valiant efforts, there was simply no waking or even slightly budging what could only be described as an unconscious 500-pound Gulliver spread out on their very ornate carpet. A meeting was held and the wise decision was made to leave him there. … For safety purposes, both to protect him and any passersby, they decided to place a small velvet rope barrier around André, who was by now snoring loudly enough to shake the lobby walls.

 
Elwes quotes Buttercup herself, Robin Wright, on the subject: “He was a bottomless pit. I think he went through a case of wine, and he wasn’t even tipsy.” 
 

 
As Richard English wrote in the pages of Modern Drunkard, “No other wrestler ever matched his exploits as a drunkard. In fact, no other human has ever matched Andre as a drinker. He is the zenith. He is the Mount Everest of inebriation. … Consider the number 7,000. It’s an important number, and a rather scary one considering its context, which is this—it has been estimated that Andre the Giant drank 7,000 calories worth of booze every day. The figure doesn’t include food. Just booze.”

English claims that Andre the Giant holds the record for beers consumed in a single sitting, at 119, a feat that took him (only) six hours—meaning that he drank a beer every three minutes on average. According to English, Andre’s bar tab for a month’s stay at the Hyatt in London while filming The Princess Bride came to just over $40,000.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Existential odd couple: Samuel Beckett and André the Giant had a posse

 
With friends like these you won’t need enemies.

Some dumb Australians holidaying in Canada decided after a two-day bender that it would be fun to dump their sleeping buddy off the second floor balcony of their ski-slope chalet.

As one of these idiots allegedly said:

“Our mate Snowy passed out half naked on the couch after a 2 day bender. He needed a wake up, so we threw him off the second story balcony of our house into the snow.”

They’re lucky Snowy didn’t break his neck.

According to Live Leak, the video was allegedly pulled from You Tube and Facebook after complaints, and there are supposedly “rumours of a potential police investigation.” Supposedly…

(It’s more shocking than you think it’s going to be.)
 

 
Via Live Leak

You’re good. No one can tell. You’re a social drinker. Sophisticated. Adult.
 
These hilarious photographs, dated between 1863 and 1868, are believed to be propaganda from a New South Wales temperance group. While some might argue they’re a bit sensational, I’d say that for a certain type of drunk, they’re deadly accurate (Have drunks changed much since the mid 19th century? No, they just have Twitter now). They coincide with the 1866 “Drunkard’s Punishment Bill” of New South Wales, suggesting there was a bit of a local alcoholism problem. The photographer, Charles Percy Pickering, was commissioned by the NSW government. Though he produced a bevy of historic photographs, he went bankrupt multiple times—perhaps it was the drink?!?
 

This is it—the sweet spot. You’re a little sloppy, but charmingly so. You’re funny, cute and less inhibited, but you still have your wits about you.
 

Now we’re approaching the point of diminishing returns. You have begun to voice controversial opinions to a disinterested audience. You’re slightly angry at someone for reasons you will later fail to recall. You feel the need for brutal honesty.
 

“You guys! I find this amaaaaaaaazing wheelbarrow! Let’s take it home! Some one help me take this wheelbarrow home! I neeeeeed it! For… reasons.”
 

You don’t remember this part at all, but you were mumbling at your girlfriend to “just let me sleep here.” Your friends will later tell you they had to beg a cop not to throw you in the drunk tank, assuring him that they’d see you home safely. They even managed to fit your wheelbarrow in the cab. In the cold light of day you no longer want it, but they went to so much trouble you can’t throw it away. You owe everyone an apology.
 

 
I don’t know what genius came up with the idea of putting inspirational fitness slogans about “never quitting” over people who have consumed waaaaaaaaaaaay too much alcohol, but I do appreciate it!
 

 

 
With thanks to Eve Lee, reddit and Imgur. 
 
More after the jump…
 

 
Too bad these nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, Ecstasy, alcohol and cocaine porcelain plates are sold from Etsy seller, Trixiedelicious. I’m sure if enough people write in, Trixiedelicious would make more. There’s no harm in asking, eh?

Seven Deadly Hits: A Drug Assemblage

(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)