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Man believes there is such a thing as 'quality tequila'

A MAN is insisting his friends dislike tequila because they have not had the ‘good stuff’, not because it is irretrievably vile regardless of cost.

Joshua Hudson, 33, claims that the spirit has a rich and complex flavour that needs to be savoured, despite all his friends having tried it before and deciding they do not have a taste for drain cleaner.  

Hudson’s girlfriend Lucy Phipps said: “Whether Josh gets a cheap bottle from Lidl or spends a fortune getting it shipped from Mexico, the result is the same: activating my gag reflex.

“He keeps banging on about buying ‘sipping tequila’, as if that makes it better. I’d argue the best way to drink it is to get it over with in one agonised gulp with a f**kload of salt and lemon, both of which are pretty nasty in themselves.

“Josh thinks liking tequila makes him special and interesting, like when he got into butter churning, or the time before that when he went on a taxidermy course and stuffed a squirrel.

“Honestly, I’d rather go through the experience of watching him gut a rotting rodent again. It would be less disgusting than having to drink this pisswater.”

Hudson said: “I’m sure Lucy will come to appreciate this wonderful drink. As any tequila lover knows, it gets a lot easier to gag down after about half a pint.”

We've been together for 23 years but aren't married. How special are we?

OUR relationship is the best, by far. Because although we’ve been a couple for decades with children and a mortgage, we’re incredibly special because we’re not married.

Yes, our love is different. It requires no official seal. It stands on no conformist ceremony. It exists, and thrives, outside the laws of society. It is a love unchained.

As we mingle with you at the school gates, at Vilma’s ballet class, in your pubs and bars, you assume we’re married. Of course you do. Your pathetic imaginations can reach no further.

The moment when we share the truth – ‘Actually no, we’re not. We’re together purely because we want to be’ – is so delicious to us. To see your faces crumple in incomprehension. ‘Not… married?’ you mumble, stunned.

‘No, we just never felt the need,’ I continue, gaily, as if I wasn’t stamping all over your piteous ideas of happiness. As if this did not shatter every certainty you’ve ever clung to. As if it didn’t render your entire life invalid.

We never had a bourgeois wedding day. There’s no dress, no posed photograph. We’re still as wild and spontaneous as you were once. Oh, we argue in Sainsbury’s just like anyone else, but there’s a thrilling edge to it you’ve long since sealed away.

Once the secret’s out it changes everything. ‘They’re not married,’ you whisper, over glances freighted with envy. ‘Their relationship doesn’t need a crutch. It makes them sexy and dangerous.’ Yes, I nod.

And though, like fellow heretic Kirstie Allsopp, we may one day have to wed for the sake of legality, for this bloody country and its petty little laws, we have lived and loved unfettered and free.

For we are together, but not married. And for all you know we still have sex.

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