Enjoy Downton Abbey responsibly

There are many ways in which a chap can explain his enjoyment of Downton Abbey, the reboot of the class war which aims for the grandeur of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ in its heydey but, because it is intended for an ITV audience, is pitched rather more at a ‘you rang my lord’ sensibility and which, after all, is Julian Fellows’s attempt to do what Aarion Sorkin did with ‘the West Wing’; spin out a movie idea into a series.

As a Gentleman, one needs no excuse for watching quality costume drama, one can justify one’s close observation by criticising the wearing of a fob watch before supper, or explaining that a particular variety of gin was not actually available to the upper classes until a decade later than the scene depicted. As a gentleman however, you will need to have your excuses ready for watching a programme on ITV. Hardy dependables such as ‘my finger slipped’ or ‘the bloody remote’s not working’, such as are employed when one is discovered watching ‘babestation’ (an act of contrition if ever there was one as, has been remarked upon elsewhere, ‘babestation is essentially a reason for a complaint to Trading Standards if ever there was one’). Like late night viewing, one needs to keep the tissues handy, although one can always, when blubbing at an unexpectedly emotive scene (death of a beloved pet, anything involving rickets and a sickly maid), claim unexpected dust.

As a Player, one will be familiar with ITV. This is how you keep up with the football scores and know when Iceland have Pot Noodle on three-for-two. You will, however, have to have your excuses handy for watching a costume drama, as if discovered you may be accused of being a homosexualist, or educated. On such an occasion it does well to have a box of tissues handy, as one can claim to be knocking one out over the still lovely Elizabeth McGovan, prior to an evening of classic 80s DVDs featuring her when she was still tubby. On no account should you be caught crying while watching Downton Abbey, the shame will stick to you, like a dried tissue, forever.

There is though, one cast-iron excuse for watching Downton, and that’s the Downton drinking game.

There are two versions, ‘child’ and ‘adult’.

For the children’s version, you pick a single character and drink what they drink for each episode. I know what you are thinking – always choose a toff, as they drink more and better. A sound idea in principle, but sometimes a mistake. While a toff can do well in the cocktail and wine with dinner stakes, nobody gets through gin like a servant. Tip: if you know that the storyline may feature a maid who suspects she is pregnant, choose her and bulk-buy the Gordon’s.

The adult version takes a little more effort. You have to drink what everyone in the scene is drinking. This can involve shifting quite a few cocktails and glasses of wine, all the while ensuring that you match the servants gin for gin.

For the Christmas special I decided to go with the adult version, as this was the one time in the year that I had sufficient quantities of wine, spirits and no-work-the-next-morning to play the adult game. I think I was doing alright up to the shoot, but then I think there was drinking, or maybe it was one of the extras in the background having a snort? Was it a shoot or a hunt? I know that people drink an awful lot while hunting because a) without killing a fox you’ve got to get your jollies somehow b) nobody gets in the saddle and gallops over the countryside sober and c) when your horse rears and tosses you into some farm machinery that was parked the other side of a bramble hedge, it’s better to be pre-anesthetised.

The upshot was that the game was an unqualified success but I now need to watch Christmas at Downton again, as I fear I may well have missed a few, if not all, very major plot points.

(The alternative is to take a drink of your choice every time some costume drama incident happens. Depending on your character this can be, for instance, somebody saying ‘iPod’ instead of ‘gramaphone’, or downing a shot every time you spot repressed longing. If it’s poofs, that’s a double! If it’s lesbians…down the bottle and Game Over.)

Line two, what's your answer?

There must be people (I imagine, I’m not going to waste one second actually conducting research when I can just throw out an opinion the way a fat kid throws away a McDs wrapper) who are slow to anger, who go through life neither blowing their stack on a regular basis nor, for that matter, burst into tears of joy when shopping for ‘sorry you’re leaving’ cards and find just the perfect one. People, in other words, whom have their emotional thermostats set at room temperature.

I don’t think I’m one of them…not even when I’m sober.

I came close to suspecting I might be one last week. Two stories emerged that, if you believe the media, rock the very fabric of society and, if you believe the opinion of everyone else, not only fit into the slot neatly occupied by such headlines as ‘sky is blue’ and ‘water is wet shock’, but enshrined forever the principle that what is important in one village (in this case the media village and the Westminster village), is not important in that other village known as ‘the rest of the world’. Like local fame, shagging goats in one village does not make you a celebrity across the entire county…unless you take your goat-shagging act on the road and stump up a substantial advertising budget.

The first story was about ‘phone votes and ‘phone-in competitions on the BBC being rigged. Weeks ago the commercial channels had been exposed as rigging votes like bastards. As this was happening on the same channel that ‘Pop Idol’ airs on and everyone remembers it was won by a fat lass last year, so vote-rigging was a surprise to only a few people in a secure ward.

But the BBC. Christ alive! Could we believe anything that they said ever again – because it appears that a couple of competitions were rigged! This cast doubt over everything else…was the news coverage of the Gulf War fair? Was that vase on Antiques Roadshow genuine ming? Is Dawn French really that fat?

The outrage, I guess, is based on the idea that as licence fee payers we are supporting our own rip off, but worse than that, the BBC had compromised their integrity, which they swiftly attempted to make up for in an act of self-immolation worthy of some of the stranger web-sites available. Every news bulletin broadcast by the BBC carried the fiasco as their top story. There was no need, as all the Murdoch ‘press’ were already putting the boot in – though why the papers and news don’t just have ‘watch Sky’ printed in the top right hand corner of the page and screen is beyond me. Too subtle?

Personally, I couldn’t give a toss. Nor, I think, could anyone else. If this had been something that somebody had cared about, like rigging the national lottery, then the only thing to do would be to get down Television centre with some spuds wrapped in foil and cook them in the embers of whatever was left of the building.

The only thing I’ve voted in and cared about the result was ‘restoration’ – posh persons Pop Idol where you vote to save a building. Oh, and ‘any dream will do’. I voted for Lee, he won the part of Joseph and my wife is watching him on stage tonight in the show. So…where’s the rip-off (apart from £50 a ticket for an old show!).

Oh, and the other thing? No prosecutions in cash for honours. Police criticised for investigating but not prosecuting…possibly by the sort of people that think that a police investigation should take two hours, take place in a picturesque part of England and end up with the conviction of the one you suspected right from the start, because she used to be in that sit-com.