‏A song pops into my head.

‏Lynyrd Skynyrd, it could be argued, only had about three real tunes (Freebird, Sweet Home Alabama and The Endlessly Extended Chug-a-Lug Blues Jam). Whiskey

‏Rock’n’Roller tended to become The Endlessly Extended Chug-a-Lug Blues Jam live on stage, but its lyrics have that genuine sense of breast-beating look-ma-ah’m-drinkin’ rock excess that has, in a moderate, restrained sort of way, informed my life. Motorcycles, whisky and music: central to the Skynyrd myth (and cars, and aeroplanes, sadly, like the one that nearly wiped the band out) and to my own. You could add some religion to the mix, if you like. Skynyrd certainly would have been uneasily aware of that Robert Johnson rock’n’roll deal with the devil they’d made, and the fact that God was just longing to take a little vengeance. Me, I’ve been waiting for the lightning bolt to fall from an annoyed divinity ever since I gave up my faith and life as a travelling evangelist to follow alcohol and music and moderate excess. Journalism was the obvious place to pursue these interests.

‏There was a time when journalism was a reasonably exciting occupation. And you got paid real money for doing it, too.

‏Anyway, there are a couple of lines from Whiskey Rock’n’Roller that capture it all: religion, in the form of a prayer:

‏‘Lord, don’t you take my whiskey and rock’n’roll,’ and the rest. Sex, alcohol, movement across the planet: ‘Women, whiskey and miles of travelin’ is all I understand.’ Quite. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Didn’t. Though I might have spelt whisky without the ‘e’. This whisky/whiskey spelling conundrum: It’s basically down to Scotch having once been absolutely terrible. Poor quality, frequently toxic. Bear with me.

‏The name comes from Gaelic (pronounced Gaylic, if we’re talking in Irish, or Gaelic (prounounced Gallic, if we happen to be in Scotland). Scots Gaelic developed from the Irish version, and it’s more than probable that the magical recipe for whisky came from there too, courtesy of Columba or his various monkish followers. Uisge beatha, in Scots Gaelic, Uisce beatha in Irish. Water of Life. And if you’re thinking that seems awfully similar to the Latin aqua vitae, as in Aquavit, or Eau de Vie, as in Cognac, Armagnac or Calvados, then you’re absolutely right. Those Latin-speakers have been using the term since the 1300s. But in every culture, in every country, distilled alcohol has been seen as a life-affirming, life-giving liquid. Magical. An elixir, in fact. Of course, in large quantities, it will kill you, but its origin was as a medicine. And to go back to Gaelic (Scots) that’s why it’s best to moderate your intake by asking for te bheag. A wee one. You can have several wee ones. Lots of wee ones. Enough wee ones to sink the proverbial Titanic. But stick to wee ones and you’ll be all right, mostly.

‏Alcohol, then. Did the Irish monks invent it? Some would say it’s impossible to believe that alcohol could first have been distilled anywhere else. But no, the Celts did not pioneer the hard stuff. Forget the monks. Forget (for the moment, as we shall return to it) Christianity. Alcohol is an Islamic invention. Sort of.

‏We’re talking ‘pure’ distillation here, as there’s been a form of it on the Indian subcontinent since 500BC. Ethanol - C2H5OH – boils at 78.4 degrees centigrade, which is lower than water. That means it comes wafting off heated, fermented liquid before watery steam does. All you have to do is condense it on something cool, and bingo: Bob is your wobbly-legged uncle.

‏Forget all that mystical Celtic twilight nonsense about some pre-croft heathery crofter accidentally boiling up beer and licking shockingly strong ethanol off the top of his curiously-shaped iron pot. It was all happening way to the east. Arab and Persian chemists, at the absolute cutting edge of science in their day, took the technology forward, developing processes and equipment that would be recognised and admired today within the precincts of the Heriot Watt University Brewing and Distilling of Mind-Altering Liquids Department.