St Joe’s parish

There is already a patron saint of bartenders, St Amand, a seventh-century French monk who acquired credibility by bringing back to life a hanged criminal and parlayed his fame into a life spent founding monasteries. But if ever a replacement figurehead were sought, then the profession could do worse than look to Joe Scialom (above left). These days his name is known only to a few booze aficionados, but from 1937 to 1952 he presided over the Long Bar at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo.

Few remember Shepheard’s either, but a century ago it was one of the most famous stop-overs in the world, the Middle Eastern link in a glittering chain of high-end hospitality stretching from London’s Savoy to the Taj in Bombay, Raffles in Singapore and the Grand Hotel, Khartoum. Shepheard’s streetside terrace was, like Piccadilly or Times Square, a place that everybody dropped by at one time or another.