The New London Cocktail Review

Park Lane

Mayfair

London

W1K 1QA

Glenn Fiddich

“So what’s it really like at the top of Mount Everest?” Ludicrously Hot Date asked me, popping a wasabi peanut into her mouth. As she leaned forward to pick up a replacement, I caught a glimpse of something black and expensive-looking underneath her dress.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Cold. Snowy.”

“And you got up there totally without oxygen?”

“Well, I…”

“Wow. That is so… I mean, wow.” In went another peanut. Up went my blood pressure.

I stumbled across Ludicrously Hot Date in the personals section of a well-known newspaper’s website. She was naturally blonde, French-Canadian and a qualified masseuse. After years of dating wimpy acupuncturists and yoga teachers, she told potential suitors viewing her profile, she now wanted to meet a real man. Someone who could fix her car without looking at the manual and make a fire in a clearing whatever the weather. Someone born without tear ducts who could demolish one of those huge American-style steaks that flops over the edge of the plate in a single sitting. Someone, in short, who very definitely wasn’t me.

I climb mountains for a living, I wrote, emboldened by four hours of Boxing Day drinking with the retired Royal Marine who lives across the road from Mother Fiddich. And I once killed a deer just by looking at it. Drinks next week?

It was, of course, a joke. I really didn’t think I’d get a reply.

But I did, and in a hog-whimpering panic I suggested subterranean China Tang for our first – and almost certainly last – meeting. Ludicrously Hot Date listed Mad Men amongst her interests, and the place has a fabulously kitsch, Don-Draper-goes-to-Hong-Kong-and-wakes-up-next-to-Miss-Kowloon vibe. There are giant light-up soda siphons and jet-setting businessmen clustered around the bar talking in three-letter acronyms and spirits of truly stupendous quality. It’s also, crucially, very dimly lit.

Having hovered at a discreet distance from us for ten minutes, a waiter wearing trousers that were infinitely better tailored than mine arrived to take our order for cocktails. Ludicrously Hot Date batted her eyelashes at him.

“Surprise me,” she said. “I love surprises. Don’t you, Glenn?” She looked into my eyes and rested her manicured hand lightly on my knee.

“Mmph,” I said.

“And for you, sir?”

“Right. Yes. Sorry. I’ll have a…” With my glasses hidden at the bottom of my man-bag (which was, in turn, hidden in the furthest recesses of China Tang’s cloakroom), I thumbed blindly through the menu, desperately looking for something macho-sounding. “A Bullshot. Great, Thanks.”

Ludicrously Hot Date wrinkled her nose.

“Seriously?”

“Oh yes!” I squeaked. “Nothing like a nice Bullshot to start the evening.”

“It’s just that it’s got beef consommé in it. And that comes from cows.” She frowned. “Doesn’t it?”

“Yes, you’re right,” I said, very slowly. “It does. Yes.”

“But I thought your profile said you were a vegetarian?”

Since eating an ill-advised box of Chicken McNuggets outside the Bolton branch of McDonald’s on New Year’s Eve 2002, I haven’t touched meat or fish of any kind. I gulped. Behind me, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ was drifting out of the speakers.

I’d sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake of having you near…

“Non-practicing,” I said.

***

“Oh, this is divine,” Ludicrously Hot Date sighed, setting her glass down on the table. “Aren’t you going to try yours, Glenn?”

I stared enviously at her bespoke Christmas Star cocktail – Ketel One vodka and something creamy with a dusting of nutmeg and a star anise on top. In front of me, in an enormous highball glass, was the Bullshot – all 350 menacing millilitres of it. It looked like Scotch broth, but without the carrots. Trying not to pull my coffee-face, I took the wariest sip since Rasputin sat down for dinner with Felix Yusupov and six of his closest friends.

“What do you think?”

I waited to pass out, or for my throat to close up. But actually, the Bullshot was just like a grown-up Bloody Mary – spicy, peppery and masses of depth. Not bad. Not bad at all.

“Delicious!” I said, grinning manically. “You know, I could drink these all night, I really could.”

“Well, I don’t know about that…” Ludicrously Hot Date moved a little closer to me on the plush banquette. “But how about we share some dim sum? I’m crazy about those cute little pork buns.”

I pictured battery chickens, and McDonald’s kitchens, and that horrible squeaking sound that Chicken McNuggets make when you bite into them. Then I pictured Ludicrously Hot Date licking barbeque sauce off her fingers.

“Count me in,” I said.