Welsh Criminals Asked: ‘Court or a Pub Ban?’ Answer: ‘Good morning your honor!’

Booze and really sloppy crime seem to go hand-in-hand. We’ve documented this heavily in “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death (and other true tales of drunken debauchery”, particularly in the section “Crime Doesn’t Pay Your Bar Tab”, and we’re presented with constant reminders of the truth of it on a regular basis. Drunk criminals, it must be said, do offer society the bonus of being easy to catch, both because they’re quick to lose their wind when chased and also because they – like the drunk in our book who left a trail of red paint running from the bank he had just robbed to the pub where he was drinking up his haul – are just really not the most formidable criminal masterminds of our times.

If you’re a proprietor of a bar, the sheer volume of drunks you have to deal with pretty much guarantees that you will come into contact with at least one arsehole a day, and if you’re really unlucky, said arsehole will have a similar outlook in like to that of Irvine Welsh’s hellish creation Franco Begbie, the violent psychopath who separated people from their teeth in both "Trainspotting" and its sequel "Porno" (he also has a walk-on role in the excellent "Glue").

According to a report in the North Wales Daily Post, it seems that pubs in North Wales might be on to something when it comes to keeping those in this latter school out of their bars. A group of publicans from 40 establishments throughout North Wales have banded together to form PubWatch. The strength of the group is in the uniform approach it takes to banning troubled customers. Get blacklisted by PubWatch and you’re out of luck at any of the bars under its preview. For your sociable drunken psychopath this is death.

The scheme has been successful, in fact from an outsider’s perspective it would seem to be embarrassingly successful as a North Wales police inspector recently went on the record as saying that the threat of a Pubwatch ban actually carries more weight than the possibility of having to face a day in court. “When they are arrested and we tell them they are off to court they shrug their shoulders, but tell them they are banned from the pubs and they start to plead with you,” he is quoted as saying in the North Wales Daily Post. Either some pretty lenient sentences are being doled out in Wales or the criminals there have a love of drinking that is more powerful than the fear of a jail-shanking.

Pub Watch systems, which are in place elsewhere in the UK, do have their detractors. A group of boozing enthusiasts in Scunthorpe have lodged a human-rights complaint against their local version of PubWatch after they received a ban from all area bars. Said one: "I well understand the ban in the pub where I was out of order - but not in 29 others where I have never done anything wrong." And he has a point. Letting a heavy ashtray fly at the head of an adversary in the midst of a spirited conversation is not exemplary behavior, but shouldn't result in you being banned from every pub if it was just an isolated incident. (But if it happens at say 12 pubs, then we can see why the local publicans might want to build a human wall to keep you off their premises).

And there is no doubt that publicans will be able to use the ban even when maintaining law and order is not the key issue, like the recent ban on Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling. We've never had a drink with the chancellor and cannot guess at his swings of temperament when under the influence, but it would appear that the ban has more to do with recent tax increases that he's implemented which directly pinch publicans.

Soon to be Dancing Behind Bars: Drunk Dancer Does a Backflip onto a Police Car

For those of us who are not secretly pining to shimmy beneath the bright lights of Broadway, dancing in public is something that requires a considerable amount of inhibition-killing liquid courage to even consider. Before you can respond to an invitation to dance, you must first ensure that you are sufficiently drunk – i.e. that you have reached the point where you can hit the dance floor fully confident that you will not sober up and realize what you’re doing mid-boogaloo.

Drinking and dancing has its benefits though; providing you don’t slip on a puddle of beer, strutting your stuff on the dance floor slightly lowers your odds of going home alone. Slightly. However, there are some times when drunk dancing really only benefits the kind of people who chronicle and laugh at feats of drunken stupidity – namely, well, us.

A 25-year-old man in Australia’s Northern Territory was drunk in a casino parking lot at 3am and felt the need to keep the party going. A paddy wagon and police car were stationed at the casino to corral drunks just like him. Our drunken friend did not take the presence of the paddy wagon as a hint to walk as quickly and as upright as he possibly could in the opposite direction to avoid a night of having Barfy Ben whisper the secrets of life in his ear at the local drunk tank. Instead, he decided, he must dance, and thought that the top of the paddy wagon’s cage would be just the place to do that.

He hopped up first on the bonnet of the paddy wagon and then this lush Lord of the Dance did a little of the ole’ soft-shoe shuffle on top of the wagon’s cage. Clearly a showman, the man knew that every truly memorable dance performance needs a spectacular finish and decided to cap his act off with a backflip onto the police car behind the paddy wagon.

According to a local sergeant, the two cops sitting in the patrol car “got quite a surprise”, when the drunken dancer came hurtling toward them, crashing through the car’s windshield and severely damaging the hood. The officers weren’t hurt and neither was the dancer, the sergeant said: "He was very, very intoxicated -- maybe that's why he didn't get too hurt from the fall.''

On St. Patrick's Day Even the Crack is Green

On Monday, we presented our Tips on How to Put Some Irish into Your St. Patrick’s Day. Number five on that list was: “Don’t just stop at green beer: On St. Patrick’s Day, not only should your beer be dyed green, but so should your infant’s milk, your pets, your elderly relations and your shrubbery (any exotic species you may have that is not already green by nature).”

What follows may be sheer coincidence or it may point to the fact that we hold sway with a group not often considered a target demographic by any legitimate businesspeople: crack dealers.

Police in Marietta, Georgia arrested five suspects for “peddling green crack on St. Patrick’s Day”. We normally don’t cover the goings-on in the wide wild world of hard drugs, mainly because the book we wrote focused on tales of drunken excess and pound-for-pound tales of crack-rock-induced derring-do just aren’t as funny, however in this case we've decided to make an exception in honor of this festive time of year.

Undercover police officers made two purchases of the holiday-themed crack before arresting those involved in the selling and another pair whose St. Patty's day was ruined due to outstanding warrants.

As to why the dealers dyed the crack green, we can only guess. We would like to think it was Monday's blog, but something tells us that guys hanging around in a van with the back door open for crack selling might not be RSS subscribers. Presumably it was not a customer--service measure either; t'would be unlikely indeed for a would-be purchaser to be handed a standard baggie of the product on March 17 and object: "What is this! It's St. Patrick's Day for chrissakes! Would it have killed you to use a little green food coloring -- to make that tiny bit of extra effort?! I mean it's like you're not even trying more. I have half a mind to take my business to Itchy Elmo next door."

Still though, police did note in the source story that "seasonal crack" has been found in the past -- red crack at Christmastime for example (if you get that in your stocking Christmas day, "Santa" might soon be in for a felony). A more likely explanation is that the crack was meant to pass for candy during a police search. It was a ruse that failed though and the judge is unlikely to give any of the five accused points for creativity or sticking to holiday theme when sentencing time approaches.

Drunk bank robbery busted minutes later

This morning, rather than remark on last night's goings on, Oscar-wise and the obviously amazing adhesive properties of the primer used to affix John Travolta's hair to his bald noggin, or the nearly comatose presenter Harrison Ford (indistinguishable from the best performances he's ever given, minus the leather vests), we decided to focus on 'Best Drunk Performance During Commission of a Federal Felony', courtesy of a Chicago bank robber. [Editor's Note: Of course, in the event any of our seat filler insiders aren't shaken down and tossed out onto Hollywood Blvd and beaten, we'll give you updates on whichever drunken celebrity does something worthy of noting here.]

In the Shark Book, we chronicled a blotto bank heist that ended inauspiciously when the 'robbin' hood' headed to the nearest bar (and we're not speaking euphemistically here as it was two blocks over) and tried to buy rounds with his security ink-stained loot.

A Windy City brigand, following in that guy's shuffling foot-steps, made the unorthodox move of showing his identification prior to tipping off the teller that he was half in the bag, while instructing them to fill it.

“I’m drunk, lower the money, give me $2,000 right now in one hundred dollar bills. Right now, I don’t want to hurt anyone!” he drawled, reaching over and attempting to grab loot from the drawer.

A witness directed Chicago's finest to a restaurant one and a half blocks from the bank, where they found a man who fit the description of the robber just 15 minutes after the robbery.

Apparently, in the interceding 14 minutes, he had outstanding debts to pay as a bank audit reported $213 missing, and $18 was found on the suspect at the time of his arrest.

Drunk Challenges Police Car to a Fight -- and the smart money is not on the boozer

Blackouts are nature’s way of sparing drunks from having to forever remember the shameful acts they may have committed whilst in liquor’s clutches. (Though the legend-like feats of the worst among them have been collected for posterity in our book, “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: and other true tales of drunken debauchery). Also, in some places simply telling an arresting officer that you were so blotto you can’t remember a single detail of the crime you are alleged to have committed will result in you being set free with a sandwich and the best wishes of the city… or so we’ve heard.

A 25-year-old man in Lincolnshire England was arrested recently for a crime he committed while blackout drunk that one would have assumed involved the consumption of hallucinogenic drugs rather than alcohol – challenging a police car to a fight.

The man is said to have finished a night’s boozing by hopping up on the roof of a marked police car and shouting “come on then”, while swinging punches. The man’s motivation for singling out a police car for this aggression were not reported, though it appears not to have been motivated by frustrations over skyrocketing oil prices, global warming or a traumatic childhood memory involving one of the Herbie The Love Bug films.

The police car did not respond to being called out, but its occupants did. The man was arrested and later plead guilty to having caused criminal damage to the police car. After he sobered up and was asked about the incident, the man claimed to have no memory of it, though he added in an honest, if harsh, appraisal of his own character that “It sounds like something I would do.”

Yes Virginia, Santa is sh*t-faced

“T’was the day after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, for fear of waking papa, the drunken louse.”

We here at TheSharkBook.com having neglected to wish you, our loyal readers, a happy holiday season would like to at least wish you a happy Boxing Day: may the bargains you meet be plentiful, and the exchange policies on some of the crappier gifts you received lenient.

For our final X-mas-related blog of this year, we wanted to touch on a trend that our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death (and other true tales of drunken debauchery), was, to our knowledge, the first to chronicle: the seeming appeal of donning a Santa Claus outfit and making a sorry-ass drunken public nuisance of oneself. (Editor’s Note: For more on this theme we recommend the excellent Billy Bob Thornton film “Bad Santa”, one of the very best boozing comedies ever made).

We covered more than one such case in The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death – the most disgraceful of all likely being a drunken riot that broke out at the finish line of a charity marathon where the participants were dressed as ole Saint Nick himself and some of the more well-oiled elfs had to be beaten and pepper-sprayed into submission.

There seems to be something about donning the garb of Santa Claus – the best collaborative effort between Coca Cola and the Roman Catholic Church since Holy Water Soda – that appeals to drunks, and this year was no exception.

First, in Christchurch New Zealand, where a gang of about 50 drunken Santas broke into a cinema, shoving families aside, tearing down posters and kicking things over while shouting the unorthodox holiday greeting “Ho f*cking ho!”

One woman who was waiting in line to see the movie “Enchanted” with her two ankle-biters in tow was sickened by this less than enchanting display and her kids were puzzled as to why these Santas were acting like their soccer hooligan older brothers: "They asked me, 'are they Santa's helpers gone crazy?' and I said `no, they are just idiots'.

As sorry a scene as that no doubt was, it is outdone in terms of sheer vile mental imagery by the goings-on of one crocked Kris Kringle in Hollywood on Christmas Eve. The man in question parked his car in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater and was shortly thereafter stopped by police and asked to submit to a Breathalyser. What tipped off the flat feet? The 6-foot-4, 280-pound man’s chosen ensemble for the evening: a red Santa hat, blond wig, red lace camisole, purple G-string, black leg warmers (hey, it gets chilly at night!) and black shoes.

The man clocked in at slightly over the legal limit and admitted having had a couple rum and cokes before setting out to give the crowd at Grauman’s a mentally scarring holiday sight. Police impounded the man’s Chevy Impala, but later released him on $5,000 bail. The arresting officer said that “There was no Mel Gibson” treatment for him, which might mean that the man was not given the floor and asked to voice his opinions on the secret Zionist cabal that is taking over the world. "He had to sober up and find his own reindeer,” the officer said.

Insatiable Lover of Loverboy

If the 80s taught us anything, it’s that if we lived to be 147, the benefits of trickle down economics would trickle down to us and that the Zeitgeist was reflected in former ballplayers becoming nannies on network television. What it didn’t teach us, apparently, was rudimentary chemistry—you know, acids and bases and a way to mix cocaine with baking soda that would make it more accessible to the masses— and more able to dull the senses to the point where you’d realize that bands with a keyboard and two guitars really sucked.

Such a band was the horrible Canadian outfit Loverboy, who brought us ‘Turn me Loose’ and ‘(Everybody’s) Workin’ for the Weekend’, a band so doomed to obscurity that even their ‘where are they now?' file has been misplaced by an preoccupied secretary. An unnamed rest stop diner source informed us that the band is still touring, and had recently induced tinnitus in several dozen tin ears at the Kansas State Fair, where a 44-year old drunk woman was arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing.

According to a Highway Patrol arrest report, the woman "stated she jumped the fence and just wanted to see Loverboy.”