The Remedy Beer Launch Part One….. ends in the Playboy Club….

For some of us, the weekend’s festivities kicked off a little too early. Thursday night and we were off to the East End for the very first tasting of Remedy. A select group of journos and beer aficionados turned up to sample this badboy. What started off as an April Fool’s joke, filmed in my living room, had gone from this:

To a fully functioning alcoholic beverage that looks like this:

To say it was a proud moment for all of us was an understatement. A lot of fun, a lot of hard work and hopefully something we’ll all be able to enjoy for a long time to come. Now’s probably the time to explain that Remedy won’t be to everyone’s taste; as we always said we weren’t looking to make another insipid lager, if you like your beer to be easy and favour quantity over quality then Remedy might not to be your taste. I’d call it a pale ale, it’s got a bit of bite to it but that’s the point: it ain’t no Hofmeister.

The usual characters were there and a fair few bottles were gone by 9pm. Then it was time for us all to go our separate ways. I went to the Henry Holland Superga launch in Camden but there’s nothing to add about that except that I bumped into this little lady…

Look how happy she is to see me. After a few sickly sweet cocktails (ah the things we do for free booze) it was time to squash into a Fiesta and hot foot it to Park Lane where things took a decidedly more chi-chi turn. The Playboy Club was celebrating its first Birthday and had accordingly invited all of London’s premier playboys, hence my presence was required.

Ok, Green was asked to do a live show and so I surfed through the doors on his coat-tails. Now we’ve been talking about going to this place for a long time now and I must say I’ve heard mixed reports. It’s got Bunny girls and every red blooded man wants to get with a rabbit. Whether it be Jessica Rabbit, the Cadbury’s Caramel minx or just Bright Eyes from Watership Down, there’s just something ok about suggesting bestial relations with a bunny: Hugh Hefner knew what he was doing.

This was ours, and a lovely lady she was. Her first words to me were one of the most wonderful snubs of my life and I’ve endured a few:

Bunny: Excuse me sir, are you sure you’re meant to be sitting here?

Me: Er, yes I think so, I’m here to drink Professor Green’s rider.

Bunny: Ah, wonderful, well then your table is just here, this table is reserved for Guns n Roses.

Alas Axel and his ridiculous new face didn’t appear but I lived in hope for several hours. The show was a blinder, no word of a lie. Unfortunately I didn’t get any usable shots because the lights were crazy and I was on stealth cam which just can’t handle such things.

But you can tell how it went from Green’s face as he came off stage….

After that we got down to what the Playboy Club does best: cocktails and bunny girls.

Now as the pictures might suggest, the Playboy Club is a more raucous affair than you might be led to believe. Amongst all the dancing and debauchery there is a relatively sedate bar named Salvatore, named after Mr. Calabrese Senior, who is renowned as one of the world’s great cocktail makers. Now seasoned regulars at the Hoxton Pony will have come across the famous Calabrese hospitality in the shape of his son Jon. When you meet Salvatore, you see where it comes from: like father like son.

The drink Stephen is holding was a gift from Salvatore also pictured above. It is an Old Fashioned, one of my favourite whiskey drinks, one that I’ve enjoyed with Stephen many a time. Yet this one is a little different. It is made with a rye whiskey from the year that the drink was supposedly invented – 1913. So effectively, it’s a 100 year old drink. Now I’m not one for the ‘world’s most expensive burger’ or 1000 pound bottles of champagne but this is one extravagant idea that I can’t help liking a lot. Not £600 a lot, but a lot nonetheless.

A very proud looking Calabrese Junior. Thanks Jon for all your hospitality and your continuing ability to turn a blind eye to my drunken exploits.

After such a gift, it all got a bit emotional and high-spirited. We danced, we drank, we laughed a lot. I’m not sure the Playboy Club is a place to meet your life partner but the drinks are unbeatable and the people watching is second-to-none.