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Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brian Glanville was fearless, witty and hovered in the press box like Banquo's ghost
Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was what Groucho Marx might have been had the old master of the one-liner shown any interest in football. I doubt if the greatest soccer scribbler of them all – the London-born son of a Dublin dentist and an Old Carthusian expensively educated in literature and song – met Groucho (Brian knew a host of famous people), but their exchanges would surely have blistered the paint off the walls. Nobody swore so elegantly as Glanville, who hovered in the press box like Banquo's ghost, the gathering's invisible conscience, ready to deliver a scathing observation, relayed, sotto voce, to a nearby colleague like a chorus baritone in one of his favourite operas. Sitting behind me in the Tottenham press box during one match, he leaned forward to remark – apropos bugger all – on the future of the then struggling young Sunday Correspondent: 'It has the smell of death about it.' Garth Crooks, who was sitting next to him, was as bemused as he was amused. Related: Brian Glanville, journalist lauded as 'the greatest football writer', dies aged 93 The joy of Glanville was, perversely, best experienced when he was at his most vitriolic. He loved football as few others could ever do, but he detested many things about the modern game, most vehemently commercialism and corruption, and let the world know it at every available opportunity. For most of his working life, those opportunities came around every Saturday afternoon for the Sunday Times in a golden age of football commentary as he went joke for pithy joke with the Observer's Hugh McIlvanney, Jim Lawton of the Express, and any other of the frontline heavyweights. Glanville, like many of his contemporaries, did not often bother with quotes from the principals, but he littered his work with references that showed the depth of his cultural interests. When he derided the efforts of a lazy full-back caught napping on the goalline as, 'alone and palely loitering' he was briefly impressed that I recognised it as a line from Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci – followed by the inevitable put-down: 'Did poetry in your school, did they?' No pity there, then. It was part of what made up the Glanville we knew and loved. He was fearless – and feared. If that implies arrogance, so be it. But it was a price worth paying to hear and read the string of witticisms that lit up his work. He would pursue a story or an opinion to the end of its useful life, such as in the Lobo-Solti match-fixing scandal of 1972-73, when he wrote a series of stories under the banner of The Year Of The Golden Fix. When colleague and longtime friend Michael Collett said to him: 'Brian, I reckon you've made more from the scandal than they did from the fix itself,' he replied: 'You're too facking right I have.' He did not let many earning opportunities pass him by and hoovered up all sorts of stories for Gazzetta dello Sport (he lived in Italy for many years) while simultaneously reporting on a match, major or minor. I recall one international at Wembley when he interrupted the chatter to inquire: 'Anyone hear the results of the rowing from Nottingham?' There was an Italian competing. He wrote and spoke across several mediums – books, plays, occasional commentary, film and radio scripts – upsetting listeners in a 1950s BBC play about Hendon's Jewish community in north London, where he had grown up. It did not seem to bother him. Brian was at his happiest when looking in from the outside. As a scriptwriter, Glanville left us with many pearls in the incomparable film of the 1966 World Cup, Goal! When his beloved Italy went out to North Korea – a shock on a par with Vesuvius, in his opinion – he put in the narrator's mouth the memorable aside: 'So Italy go home to their tomatoes.' He also wrote, acidly, of the North Koreans: 'So little known, they might be flying in from outer space.' The film, matchless for its sense of drama and sun-drenched nostalgia, gripped an audience that would celebrate England's lone success at the highest level in the final. The campaign reached an ugly crescendo, however, in the foul-filled quarter-final win over Argentina. Glanville's contribution was that 'it is famous not just for Geoff Hurst's controversial offside goal but the Argentines' dirty tactics, which included spitting and kicking'. That unvarnished assessment came from Glanville's rock-solid confidence in his own judgment. He would listen to an argument, but not often back down. His then sports editor, the late Chris Nawrat, once insisted he finally go and talk to the England manager Bobby Robson (after years of roasting him in print without a single quote). Brian reluctantly trudged off with the paper's peerless photographer, Chris Smith, who would also operate the reel-to-reel tape recorder for the historic showdown. When they returned to the office, Glanville – technically illiterate – said it had gone so well they nearly ran out of tape, adding: 'What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with it now?' 'Transcribe it, Brian,' Nawrat said, surreptitiously tying some twine from the nearby art desk around Glanville's ankle until he pressed all the right knobs and the job was done several hours later. If Glanville listened to anyone, it was his enduring muse. Groucho Marx's wit was never far from his lips or his pen and Brian delighted in borrowing from the great man's litany of smartarsedness in conversation. One of my favourites, and his, was Groucho's quip after suffering some fools not-so-gladly: 'I've had a particularly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.' But any evening with Brian was unfailingly entertaining, a gift even. Another one gone, then, 'home to his tomatoes'. Kevin Mitchell was the Guardian's award-winning former tennis and boxing correspondent
CBC
10-02-2025
- Business
- CBC
Chartreuse shortage has bartenders crying and an Ottawa distillery innovating
The French liqueur Chartreuse has become a cult favourite in the bartending community in recent years. That popularity, plus a production cap by the monks who make it, has resulted in a shortage in many markets. In Ontario, a hold on orders has some establishments rationing their supply. "When we felt this was coming on, we stockpiled as much as we could," said Stephen Flood, head bartender at Ottawa's Riviera restaurant "Right now, we're down to what is in that gigantic bottle at the back. We've been pouring into smaller bottles, but that's going to run out pretty soon." Flood describes the flavour as like nothing else, making it an indispensable weapon in a bartender's arsenal, one that he'll miss if he can't get it in the future. "Green Chartreuse is a little higher proof and zingy, I guess, the best word. I know it's kind of a vague word, but you do sense this sort of like a sharp, herbaceous note," he said. "The yellow Chartreuse is a little lower in alcohol and it's a bit more honeyed, a little bit more mellow, but it also has those under notes of herbaceousness." Limited supply Chartreuse is reputedly made of 130 plants and herbs, distilled according to a secret recipe that only two, or at times three, monks know. They aren't likely to divulge the details either, as the order takes a vow of silence. "It's the flavour that has me in and coming back to it so often, but with the story on top of that, I then get to go 1,000 layers deeper," said Paul Einbund, a restaurant owner, sommelier, and Chartreuse expert based in California. That story is steeped in mystery, but the cliff notes version says it all started when the Catholic monks of the Carthusian order in France received a manuscript from a Marshall of France in 1605. The document contained a list of plants and directions for making an elixir of long life. The monks worked on the recipe over the years and began selling it as a medicine, then when it became popular, as a drink. Along the way, it became the primary source of income for the monastery. Now, centuries later, after a business arm was developed to market the liqueur, it is a brand known throughout much of the world. The herbaceous flavour has gone in and out of fashion over its history, but recently, has experienced a fresh surge in popularity. "It's less than a decade, probably eight years, that it's been blowing up in America at least. And I believe that we were the creators of the renaissance of Chartreuse in cocktails," said Einbund. "The real blow up probably happened during the pandemic where global consumption of everything ... blew up." In 2021, the monks announced that despite growing demand they would not be increasing production beyond their current record levels. In Ontario, Chartreuse is out of stock at the LCBO because of a pricing dispute, a person with close knowledge of the situation told CBC. The source spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive commercial matters. In a written statement, the LCBO said that to keep prices competitive it has a long-standing policy of requiring that any product ordered be available at a price equal to or lower than the price at any other government liquor board or purchasing body in Canada. CBC's source explained that Chartreuse recently raised its prices but made a deal with the Quebec liquor corporation SAQ for a lower price than the LCBO. The LCBO didn't answer direct questions about its dealings with Chartreuse, but said in its statement that it continues to work with vendors to fulfil orders, without providing a timeline for the product returning to shelves. Chartreuse's business arm did not respond to a request for comment. An alternative? But the shortage isn't bad news for SFR Distillery in Ottawa's Kanata neighborhood. Master Distiller Adam Brierley is seizing what he sees as an opportunity. "Our Monk's Secret Herbal Liqueur is our answer to the Chartreuse shortage," he said. When Brierley noticed the shortage in Ontario, he was inspired to create an alternative. "I grabbed the only bottle that I could find over a year ago, and we've been smelling and tasting and working on it since," Brierley said. After 18 test batches, the resulting liqueur was "85 per cent there", Brierley estimated.
