Ninety-two readers (thank you!) sent accounts of their worst debacles on drink or drugs. I printed out each one and clipped it into a ring binder. Last Thursday afternoon I made a pot of tea, opened the file, and settled down for a good read. The first sentence of the first entry was: ‘Priggish as it sounds, I am ashamed of the lesbian orgy I initiated while off my nut on champagne.’ I read that — it was amazing — then I took a restoring sip of Rosie Lee and turned the page. The next one was from a soldier. His first sentence was: ‘Kabul was darker than a Pashtun’s fanny.’ It was a tale of hellish debauchery at a party of South African mercenaries, embassy staff, NGO nymphomaniacs and ‘bemused translators’.
After that came a civilian entry, headed by a postal address, the first line of which was: ‘The Rear Cottage’. The opening sentence of the occupant of Rear Cottage was: ‘I’m in my second day of an amphetamine binge and not yet ready to stop.’ A decomposing body found in the boot of a car with a crossbow bolt in its head wasn’t even the climax of this one.
More violence in the next. I am transported to Amsterdam’s red-light district. A punch-up has broken out between a posse of pimps and a party of British lads enjoying a stag night. Our lads are in no condition to sustain the fight and all flee except the narrator, who is too drunk to notice that he is battling the pimps on his own. Then the head pimp, in an unsporting but wholly conclusive manoeuvre, pulls out a small revolver and shoots our tenacious Spectator reader in the kneecap.
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