Dear Philippa,

I couldn’t get to the Pox Doctors’ Feast in the end; snowed in. I am very disappointed not to have been there because I hold in high regard the doctor in whose honour it was arranged, and clearly I am not alone in that as I hear that many speeches were made, piling praise upon him. Had I been there I would have spoken briefly to tell a story of one occasion when I visited him in Belfast.

Dr Gryppekchok-Titely is his name – actually it isn’t, of course, I made it up to avoid unsettling litigation.

He enjoys a good dinner does Dr G-T and on one of my visits we went to what was then one of the few good restaurants in the city, called I think Roscoffs. We dined well, I met the chef who was something of a celebrity, and we had a little drink. When we got back to his home we decided to have another little drink and he went off to find a bottle, leaving me in a comfortable room whose walls were hung with many paintings. And he left me with a challenge: “If when I come back you can tell me which of the pictures is the most valuable I will give you fifty pence”.

When he returned, I pointed to a small oil of a man trying to gentle a frightened horse, a very powerful picture. I was right, and he, having somehow missed my artistic side, was astonished. The painting was by Jack Yeats, brother of the poet, and he was confident that I would never have heard of him. He became rather cross and demanded to know how I had so quickly identified the picture among so many. It was simple, I told him; it is the only one in the room individually lit. He denounced this as cheating, refused to hand over the fifty pence, and we never again spoke of it. Art appreciation is a wonderful gift and I know little of it, but I thought at the time, and still do, that acute observation would have scored higher marks from a medical man whose profession sets such store by it when it is found among themselves. I didn’t need the fifty pee then, but I think the trick was worth at least a quid.

Speaking of having a little drink, I see that there is powerful coalition of medical royal colleges and rather frightening anti-drink zealots who are saying, asserting, that moderate drinking must be defined as no more than three pints of beer or one bottle of wine a week, about three units. A week! You might as well give up altogether. Which is of course what they want. But why? And how many doctors, I wonder, drink so little? I remember years ago talking to a member of the committee that came up with the 28 units a week for men, fewer for women, that had until now been the orthodox view, and he told me that there was no evidence at all upon which to base a “safe dose” recommendation, but such was the demand from the Department of Health for “numbers” that they pretty much plucked some out of the air. Numbers that they no doubt derived from their own modest habits.

I once had lunch with Dr Anthony Clare, of blessed memory, and complained to him about what seemed to me the obsession of the medical colleges with restricting alcohol at a time when the NHS was beset with major health problems and the deteriorating services it was providing to address them. He told me not to worry, and clever psychiatrist that he was calmed my rage with a simple prescription: he sent me a copy of a report on safe and sensible alcohol consumption, published by the medical establishmment in the 1960s, so that I might carry it about with me and consult it from time to time. It recommended half a bottle of whiskey a day. I have it still.

Pip Pip!

Howard