17-05-2025
Comedian JON CULSHAW on his impromptu get-together with Liam Gallagher
My favourite drink as a child was cherryade. I grew up in Ormskirk, Lancashire, in the 1970s, and a van used to come around selling fizzy drinks. As a six-year-old I remember thinking cherryade was a very outlandish thing. Old-fashioned Lucozade, too, before it was seen as a sports drink. Basically anything that was fluorescent.
I start every morning with a coffee. It has to be a formidable, strong brew. I've got a De'Longhi machine at home in Lancashire that makes a lot of noise I'm not sure is entirely necessary. It's like having R2-D2 in the kitchen. I always have a nice big mug with loads of blue-top milk and maple syrup instead of sugar.
The first time I tasted alcohol was on a Sunday morning when I was seven. My mum, Theresa, was making a roast and my dad, Jim, would always have a glass of beer before his lunch. One day he let me have a taste and I found it repellent. I thought, 'Drinks aren't meant to be like this, they're meant to be like cherryade.' Maybe he was trying to set me on a path of sobriety by putting me off.
I only started to like beer when I got my first job as a teenager. I worked at St Anne's Social Centre as a glass collector and I was terrible. I used to take the glasses away before people had finished and old men would say to me, 'Hey, hey, there's still a tuppence worth in there.' When my shift finished they'd give me a pint of lager, and eventually I came around to the taste. It's a rite of passage: your tastebuds change as you get accustomed to it.
The most memorable place I've ever had a drink was on a ship in the Faroe Islands. I visited in 2015 and met this fabulous fellow, Frank, who was 95 years old and had just lost his wife. It was a solar eclipse trip and at the scheduled time we went on a boat to the middle of the sea, but it was really cloudy. Then, at the crucial moment, the clouds parted like the Red Sea and the eclipse flashed into view. I recall Frank and I had a glass of champagne and we were both awestruck. He said afterwards the experience had made him realise good days were possible again after his loss.
The most famous person I've ever shared a drink with is Liam Gallagher. It was 2005 and I was living in North London and working on BBC Two's Dead Ringers. One night I was doing some late-night shopping in my local supermarket when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and Liam said to me, 'Hey man, how's it going? You still taking the p**s out of everyone?' Then he offered me a lift home and ended up coming in for an impromptu can of Guinness. He was absolutely wonderful: so funny and clever.
If I could share a drink with anyone, I'd pick the late astronomer Carl Sagan. I love astronomy and I'll always remember his speech, 'a pale blue dot', in his programme Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He was talking about a picture of Earth taken from Saturn, where it just looks like a little grain of sand and said, 'There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.' It was incredibly humbling and he's someone I admire so greatly for pointing out how lacking in perspective we humans can be.
At my funeral, I'd like them to serve a whisky from 1968, the year I was born. There's something so indulgent and peaty about a good whisky. My favourite bourbon is Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey. That's what I'd want people to enjoy while they send me off.
