Turn back the boozing clock

Not sure why, but the past is currently proving pretty popular. All the rage among London's dapper drinking destinations is a celebration of the sepia-tinted drinking days of yesteryear.

Recently, I visited two new venues opened by Fluid Movement, the people behind Purl, an award-winning Prohibition-style cocktail bar that opened last year in Marylebone. Rather than paying homage to Prohibition, Fluid's latest venture, the Worship Street Whistling Shop, venerates all things Victorian in both drinks and décor.

Named after the 18th-century term for a vendor of alcohol, it's a Dickensian drinking den where bartenders are bedecked in authentic clobber; all braces, frilly shirts and canvas trousers.

In an attempt to refashion a genuine gin palace, they've installed a 'dram shop' alongside a 'drinks laboratory', breathed life back into Victorian cocktail recipes using home-made tonics, syrups, sodas and bitters and designed their own bespoke

barrel-aged spirits, which sit on the back-bar.

The beers, Kernel Porter and Meantime Stout, are liquid legacies of London's brewing past, while the food — pies, oysters, potted shrimps and half-pints of prawns — is a further retro creation. It's like drinking in the London Dungeon but it's different and, if you're going to get people off their sofas and spending money, different is what you need to be.

Same goes for the 17th-century maritime-themed VOC, Fluid's recently-opened sister venue in King's Cross. Named after the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (or the Dutch East India Company), it is well worth checking out.

Old beer styles reborn​

Small and stylish, its shelves are stacked with cocktails decanted into apothecary-style, wax-sealed bottles; more bespoke barrel-aged spirits and punches dangle in casks from the ceiling; and they heat their drinks using a 200-year-old red hot poker. It's all very authentic.

Fluid is not the only one. Hardly a week goes by in London without a new 'secret' speakeasy opening its overly concealed doors, and nearly every bartender seems to look like an extra from Bugsy Malone — even the Playboy Casino, infamous back in the 1960s, has made a comeback in central London. Knickerbocker glories are cropping up on menus alongside baked Alaska, cocktail lists are championing the classics, and it's happening in beer too.

Old beer styles are being dusted down by London brewers Kernel and Meantime and drunk by trendy types. Even Truman beer, a name synonymous with London's proud pub past, has been reborn thanks to ale-drinking entrepreneurs James Morgan and Michael-George Hemus.

But what's inspiring this retailing rewind? Perhaps it's because the past looks more appealing at a time when the present doesn't look too good. As you may have noticed, we're up to our collective back wheels in a downturn, the economy staggering about like an elephant trying to fight the effects of a tranquilliser dart, and financial forecasts are not painting a particularly flattering future.

Bring back the quart​

Faced with an uncertain tomorrow, are people reaching out for some

kind of rose-tinted reassurance? Perhaps, after all those hours on Twitter and Facebook, everyone is craving a more intimate, less isolated existence. Who knows? All that is certain is that if we were really going to turn back the boozing clock, let's not do it in half-measures.

In fact, let's do it in double measures. Let's bring back the quart. Until the end of the 19th century, this was how all beer was served — the equivalent of two pints. This may, at first, seem irresponsible given the current climate and media clamour concerning excessive drinking but it may be the only way to put our drinking 'problem' into perspective.

Perhaps only by genuinely resurrecting the daftly decadent drinking habits of past centuries will the Daily Mail and other peddlers of nonsense realise that their smug scaremongering is so woefully misplaced.

For genuine fidelity to the past, every English man, woman and child needs to get through 75 gallons of beer each year and drink a pint of gin every week — as they did in the 1720s.

If the temperance-loving curtain-twitching neo-Prohibitionists get their knickers in a twist we could always return to the old opening hours — when pubs weren't open between 2.30pm and 6.30pm. Bigger drinks, yet less time to drink them.

That's right. Licensees could shut in the afternoon. JD Wetherspoon won't like it but, let's face it, it's had its way for a while. Publicans could have a kip, put their feet up, save on staff and energy costs and maybe pop down the butchers to buy the prize for the meat raffle or clean their pipes to ensure quality quaff in the evening.

While they did that, the rest of us would work a little harder and longer, oil the cogs of commerce and get the economy on an even keel again. Chancellor George Osborne, if you're reading this, you can have that one for free. Bring back the beerhouse too.

In 1830, with gin tearing up the social fabric like a pitbull mauling a teddy, an Act was introduced whereby certain premises were allowed to only sell beer — then perceived as a lot less evil than London's loopy juniper juice.

That would keep British brewing buoyant and prove that ale and beer alone is not responsible for binge Britain.