I’ve no quarrel with the former, but there’s a kind of lunatic herd mentality about the latter when it comes to St Patrick’s Day in Liverpool. It’s a time when everyone wears a stupid hat, protests that they have a Great Uncle McMurphy and grimace through the once-a-year pints of Guinness.

This pretending-to-be-Irish nonsense has reached its apotheosis this year in the shape of Shane Richie’s Make Me Irish. This is how it’s described in TV listings:

In a special documentary for St Patrick’s Day, Shane Richie bids “top o’ the morning” as he heads to the Emerald Isle to try his hand at a variety of traditional Irish activities.

The world’s greatest nation at Pretending To Be Irish, the Americans, are also at it – making some water green, although there are still much more despicable elements of American Pretending-To-Be-Irish delusion-ism.

I don’t know how Irish people feel about this sort of drivel, but if there was a Hartlepool or Geordie (how I am usually identified in the North-West) national holiday I’d be pretty insulted if the country’s population used it as an excuse to drink, vomit, fight and shag their way around the streets for a day shouting ‘Fishie on a dishie’ at each other, drinking Strongarm and waving asphyxiated monkeys in the air.

The Pretending-To-Be-Irish capital of the UK is Liverpool, where once a year the streets turn into a scene from 28 Days Later. At lunchtime today I went to the bank. It was absolute chaos.

There were fat girls vomiting into gutters, ambulances trying to negotiate their way through the thronged masses, pissed-up blokes clearly intent on a fight and hundreds of exposed tits.

Liverpool’s bars and pubs have to take their share of the blame for the utter mayhem that takes place on this day every year, the day when it’s OK to binge drink until you need to have your stomach pumped, smash a glass over some bloke’s head cos he looked at you funny and knock up a girl whose name you can’t remember.

It would all be Bacchanalian if it wasn’t so tawdry. My old Uncle Paddy McDoyle would turn in his grave.

• We did a feature in Black+White about binge-drinking in Liverpool a few years ago on what the NHS, police and health charities make of the problem. Worth a read.

It hits the nail on the head about Korova in that it ignored the jingly-jangly stoned cosmic scouse thing that was all the rage in Liverpool a few years ago, and I quite like Korova even if a stupid haircut seems to be a pre-requisite to get in these days.

The piece reminds me a bit of the kind of thing we used to have in Black+White, the magazine that I ran along with half of Liverpool’s journalistic fraternity a few years ago. One of our very last blags as the people behind B+W was to get into the Korova opening night a few year ago.

Here’s a bit of the article, which doesn’t merit a by-line for some reason, and a link:

Merseyside’s live music scene has traditionally been dominated by retro-leaning guitar bands. By contrast, Korova has made a name for itself by hosting exciting, forward-thinking acts who meld dance and rock: arty New Yorkers Liars and Celebrations played the opening night; Klaxons’ first show outside London was at Korova; and CSS, Crystal Castles, Friendly Fires, Late Of The Pier and Soulwax’s deck-wrecking alter-ego 2ManyDJs have all performed riotous sets at here.

Crucially, however, Korova hasn’t alienated the old guard – you’re just as likely to see Ian McCulloch or Pete Wylie sweep through its stencilled glass doors as you are Murph from The Wombats.

In fairness I’m not sure Wylie’s ever found a bar he didn’t like, but that’s by-the-bye. I don’t exactly consider an encounter with ‘Murph from The Wombats’ a reason to head down there either but I’m sure all the cool kids do.

“Every night, the bar draws people from different crowds and everyone sits happily together,” concludes [Ruben] Wu, ruminating on Korova’s enviable sense of community.

I haven’t been in Korova for a while, but the toilets seemed to play host to Liverpool’s largest fruit fly community. If that’s what the kids are into these days, who am I to argue?

I went to the Liverpool Beer Festival the other day, a curious gem in the city’s cultural diary and one that particularly appeals to me.

Attendance by men who are not pot-bellied is rare, but as my particular group were mostly well on the way or already there, that didn’t pose too much of a problem.

For the beer festival virgin, activity revolves around staring at a booklet detailing the hundreds of beers available and making appreciative noises of the latest candidate.

A beer festival is the only place you’ll attempt to eat an entire pork pie that would feed five; the only place where men queue for the toilet; and, in this case, the only place where you get steaming drunk in a church.

The crypt is a particularly versatile venue – I’ve attended exhibitions, piss-ups and exams there – and it’s a stunning one too, when the likely alternative for an event of its size is an awful exhibition centre.

It’s also fitting for a group of people that take their devotion to ale with something approaching religious zealotry. The idea of smooth flow or even lager would not go down well ere, you feel.

If I have a complaint it’s that the four-hour windows are too short. While this may prevent the whole thing descending into drunken lunacy, it does rather encourage very rapid consumption of beer, as does the vertical drinking that most are forced into by the lack of seating.

I got through ten half pints in about three hours, about four of which were rather chugged down in the last 30 minutes.

It’s always wise to approach a beer festival with a plan, even if it’s as simple as starting with the lighter stuff before moving onto the heavier porters and stouts. I had meant to keep a log of my thoughts on the day, but this soon descended into some near-illegible scribbles.

From what I can make out, this is what I though of the beers at the time:

• Great Heck YPA – summery with a pleasing sharpness

• Dark Star Brewing Hophead – generic summer ale

• Umbel ale – herby

• Mordue Millennium Bridge – innocuous

• Orkney Red MacGregor – Strongarm

• Penpont St Nonna’s – malty

• Purity Pure Ubu – nice red bitterness

• Potton Village Bike – decent red bitter

• Dark Star Espresso – good malty deep porter

• Hambleton Nightmare Stout – good deep stout

What this tells us, more than anything else, is that a career as an ale correspondent may have to wait. The truth is I rarely come across a real ale I don’t like and after the first two or three it’s increasingly difficult to discern the subtleties between one and the next, especially after scarfing down half a pork pie.

What’s also evident, even from the small range I tried on the day, is that naming a beer is a rare skill. In fact scanning the brochures for the more amusing names is one the key activities of a beer festival.

My favourites from this year include: Abbeydale’s Black Mass, Allendale’s Curlew’s Return, Bank Top’s Flat Cap, Best Mate’s Vicar’s Daughter, Grindleton’s Farley’s Dusk, Kelham Island’s pale Rider, Mordue’s The Ponytail, Sadler’s Stumbling Badger, Salamander’s Waxing Gibbous, Saltaire’s Rye Smile, Three B’s Doff Cocker and Whalebone’s Neck Oil.

Some beers give you a clue as to what they’re likely to taste like (Ginger Marble), what they’re likely to do to you (Giggle Juice) and what you’re likely to smell like afterwards (Old Tom). If you can’t take your ale it’s usually a good idea to steer clear of any beer whose name suggest some kind of threat, state of advanced intoxication or otherwise nightmarish imagery.

After the festival, and some beer chat with the Baltic Fleet’s brewers and a man with an enormous beard – something that should be on every beer festival’s things-to-see –we went to old haunt the Augustus John’s. The service was so useless and rude, however, that we retired to the Oxford – a pub that’s more like someone’s front room.

The night continued for some time for me, ensuring that the after-effects lasted long into the following day.

I urge you to go to a beer festival, and support your local brewer. You’ll find it hard to drink the mass-produced piss that turns up in most pubs ever again.

Red Dwarf is coming back! Is that good news or bad news? I’m not sure either way, and I say that as a man who owns Series 1-6 on DVD, once had an Ace Rimmer T-shirt that said ‘Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast,’ and can recite most early episodes from memory.

Satellite and cable channel Dave is making four new 30-minute specials to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of the show to be broadcast at Easter, probably inspired by repeat viewing figures. A making-of programme and improv-based Red Dwarf: Unplugged will ensure Dave gets its maximum return on the project. Red Dwarf: Back to Earth will see the crew finally return home, but further details are not forthcoming.

I’m unsure as to how this news will be greeted. There’s a really odd snobbery about Red Dwarf these days that I expect grew out of the frankly dire seventh and eighth series and the sight of spotty geeks wearing their Red Dwarf T-shirts and calling each other ‘smeg head’. On that basis Red Dwarf’s terrible reputation is well-deserved, but that ignores the fact that in its pomp it was probably the funniest show on TV.

Starting life as a character-based sitcom that just happened to be set on a space ship, early Dwarf is often referred to as ‘Steptoe & Son in Space’, a show about two people locked together by circumstance who loathe each other. Fast-forward a couple of years and the show becomes an all-out sci-fi parody, riffing on SF cliches and upping slapstick, scatology and the swear-count.

I find both versions genuinely hilarious and up to 8m of the British public did too. Two US transplants were made; the show won a BAFTA and a freakin’ Emmy; and co-creator Doug Naylor went to Hollywood in a doomed attempt to get a film made. Co-creator Rob Grant bailed after season six, and two more ill-judged and woefully-unfunny series – clearly made to tempt the US market – followed.

It’s been fully ten years since then, when Rimmer ended the series by kicking Death in the bollocks. I’ve been fairly non-plussed by TV remakes since then, which all look the same to my jaded eyes. Barring the regenerated Doctor Who I’ve found the modern updates to the likes of Survivors, Robin Hood and comedy shows like To The Manor Born jarring and weak.

I hope Red Dwarf can buck the trend, Doug Naylor can recover some of his earlier talent and the cast don’t look too shagged-out. Until Easter, here’s some of Red Dwarf’s best bits:

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‘Carmita!’

‘That is his crime, it is also his punishment’

‘What could possibly be amiss?’

And because the BBC are complete smegheads when it comes to their Youtube syndication, here’s ‘The Light Switch’.

• Oh yes, here’s some Liverpool connections: Dave Lister, played by Liverpool’s Craig Charles, hails from the Capital of Culture and was found in a box under a pool table in the Aigburth Arms; Rob Grant and Doug Naylor went to University of Liverpool, lived in Carnatic Halls and drank in the Aigburth Arms; and I once interviewed Craig Charles in Liverpool – one of the funniest and most welcoming guys I’ve ever interviewed, or met.

Thanks to some idiotic regulations in force at the Albert Dock we were faced with the choice of watching betweeen a gap in the Pumphouse and Dock buildings or walking around the entire Dock, by which time they would have certainly been finished. Lunacy.

Anyway, later on I went to the Tate to see the diverting but fairly hollow Fifth Floor and intriguing William Blake exhibition; and the Bluecoat where the decidedly patchy Next Up Liverpool Art Now exhbition and at least two gigs were on.

Me and the missus got told off for taking for trying to take a picture of me with my arm round a owl-faced child. The absurdity of that admission is not lost on me, but touches on a particularly irritating fact about certain galleries that maintain a strict policy on installation art that’s totally at odds with the aims of making art more accessible and less daunting for people. So I carried on taking photos regardless, just to be contrary.

The night ended off in the Baltic with several pints of Smoked Porter with a group of friends, and much talk of ‘cranking’, which is best left unexplained.

It was boozy, musical, cultural and fun and it seemed fitting.

However, the release of a first video in the shape of Lorry Driver and the announcement of an upcoming gigs that feature Mr B – he of the famous and brilliant Inner-City Sumo – and the ladies means it’s a good time to start.

The gang often play Free Rock’N'Roll at the Caledonia every other thursday night alongside a variety of other pub-rock/punk-rock/power-pop types in a sweaty, noisy and always-enjoyable atmosphere.

It’s pretty eclectic stuff, and there’s an eclectic audience to match. I always think of the scouse-pub drunken singalongs that any history of the city describes whenever I’m there, especially when Bentham’s anthemic choruses kick in.

There’s also a Love Music Hate Racism gig coming at Bumper where Pete and the Dinnerladies will feature. Catch it – you’ll be singing the songs in your head for weeks after.

Here’s The Lorry Driver Song video. It’s not my favourite, but it’s still dead good:

NB. This post marks my first real efforts with Apture – that’s what all the embedded links are about if you’re wondering.

The experience of South Road in Waterloo and Allerton Road in, er, Allerton should be a warning to powers-that-be of what happens when commercial activity is given free rein.

As someone who has lived on or around the Lane for nearly ten years, I feel qualified to suggest that a little delicate pruning of L’allouette’s boozy hang outs wouldn’t go amiss. The trouble is, although there are aspects of nearly every bar and pub down the road, famous for inspiring Pigeon Street (or something), that I like and admire – there isn’t one single bar that I actually really like.

Image by John Kennan

Marantos has the excellent music quiz, and others, but is a fairly sterile environment; Negresco is overpriced with a poor choice of beers and lagers; Keiths is too noisy; the Albert is too frightening; the Parkfield again lacks some choice ales; Akis doesn’t seem to know that it’s not actually on Slater Street; Vinyl is rather on the crowded side; Que Pasa served me the worst sausages I’d ever eaten this weekend; and new boy Pablos resembles an 80s hotel lobby.

Among all of these bars there isn’t one I’d really call a local. The Albert used to hold that honour, but a number of incidents – including one where I was accused in the toilets of being an undercover policeman – have rather tarnished the characterful place. I do mourn the Masonic too – a pub where an old friend once took me because she though it was sufficiently ‘working-class’ to meet with my approval.

Having said all of this I’ll readily frequent all of these places quite happily from week-to-week. It’s just that the explosion of drinking establishments has turned the Lane into something of a circus, especially of a weekend.

I’ve seen a one-man attack on the Parkfield by a virtually-naked man equipped with a garden chair; a full-on hair-extension-grabbing gang catfight; and a pint glass thrown straight through the Albert’s window while out on the Lane.

By contrast Lark Lane’s shops seem to be suffering, with a butcher’s and greengrocer’s among the places to close their doors since I moved in. There seems to be an endless array of clothes shops opening and closing too, though the Amorous Cat bookshop has made a welcome return.

Green Days and the Moon and Pea should both be investigated, though I have soft spots for the Red Fort, Romeos and Chilli Banana too. I haven’t been into Jamaican Me Hungry yet but the name itself means it deserves patronage.

Even better are the newsagents, especially my friends who feed me dates whenever I go into the delicatessen, oblivious to the fact that I hate dates. And let’s not forget Paul’s barber shop, the bits-and-bobs shop, that weird gift shop on the corner of Little Parkfield and the Place-That-Does-The-Cakes.

Anyway, is there a moral to all of this? Not really, except to suggest that the Lane would probably be a better place with a couple less bars, a ban on new blocks of flats and a few hundred less cars. There’s more to the Lane than bars and hippies.

The brewery was put into administration a couple of months ago when HBoS refused to fund a loan to pay a corporation tax bill – making Cains another real-world victim of the credit crunch.

The pair do seem to have a passion for the brewery, and they have put Cains at the forefront of the community in the city since buying it in 2002, although their financial nous may be called into question, with a counter-takeover for Honeycombe Leisure looking like the cause of Cains’ problems.

I’ve never been a massive fan of Cains’ bitter to be honest, and the lager is pretty awful, but I’d rather drink them in your typical Carling’n'John Smiths pub in Liverpool than the usual fare.

And I did once spend a delightful evening at the Everyman Theatre getting very drunk on free Cains Raisin Beer. The Dusanj Brothers sponsored the Liverpool Irish Festival and provided several dozens of bottles, which I was compelled to send to a good home.

That given, it seems like a crying shame that Cains brewery is on the edge after 150 years , having been saved from closure in 2002 and being closed for a time in the 90s.

I’ve been thinking about the lack of guest ales and speciality beers in pubs in Liverpool, Cains included, and it’s always a bit of a puzzler.

The city is well within striking distance of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria and Derbyshire – all hotbeds of bitter brewing – so why is it that you seldom see the likes of Robinson’s, Theakston’s, Black Sheep and (as a personal plea) Strongarm?

I’m a big fan of the Doctor Duncan’s, Willowbanks, and Baltic Fleets of this world (Click here for a great site on some of Liverpool’s more interesting pubs- and Sefton Park Cricket Club, where I’m often to be found, has a good range of guest ales and Hydes offerings – but Liverpool really seems to be a few steps behind on the beer front.

And you don’t see Cains as a presence in as many local pubs as you would see most city’s breweries.

Regardless, for the city to lose its brewery, in the Capital of Culture year of all years, would be an incredible shame.

24 pubs across the north-west have closed already, the administrators are in and Cains is disappearing from supermarket shelves.

However, there are bids in for the Liverpool brewery, and the Dusanj Brothers appear to be at the forefront of bidding, since a company associated with the previous owners has the leasehold to the site, potentially costing Sudarghara and Ajmail Dusanj far less than any other putative owners.

The brewery has the support of CAMRA too, with a pledge from the real-ale organisation to support any buyers who keep production in Liverpool.

Mike Benner, Chief Executive, said, “Beer drinkers in Liverpool should not lose out because of the credit crunch and we will support any company that puts forward a rescue plan for the ailing brewer to ensure great beer continues to be brewed at the Stanhope Street Brewery.”

So, there appear to be grounds for optimism. It appears doubtful than a rallying cry to support your local brewery will do much good under the circumstances, and a few more sales of local ale won’t make much of a dent in spreadsheets from the bank’s point of view in these difficult times.

Nevertheless, next time you’re in your local, consider venturing beyond that gassy, tasteless pint of non-specific. Even if you don’t like it, you can be assured you’ve done your part for your struggling local brewer.