Chris Pincher, who has just announced he is standing down as an MP, caused a scandal last summer when the then Tory deputy chief whip allegedly groped two men at the Carlton Club, admitting he had “drunk far too much”. The resulting row led to Boris Johnson’s departure from No 10.
Pincher, though, kept writing a column for The Critic titled On Drink, about his misadventures with alcohol. An illustrative piece explored American ambassador David Bruce’s “superb wine collection”. There, he wrote of Bruce that: “in each of his embassies he was able to offer up the cry of the ancients, with one important cod emendation: I came, I saw, I consumed.”
But now it seems that Pincher has moved away from the demon drink. In recent months, The Critic’s booze articles have been written instead by wine critic Henry Jeffreys. Meanwhile Pincher does a column called Deluxe. The MPs register of expenses show he gets paid £200 an article.
While he’s not writing ‘On Drink’ any more, Pincher hasn’t totally given up the booze. His most recent Deluxe column praises a whisky’s “warm, smoky finish”, and declares with a flourish: “having waved farewell, the liquid takes the high road home.” Some things never change.
