Like anything worth having, the very best whiskies aren't that easy to track down - but if you can get your hands on them, it's well worth it. Your local London Whiskey Shop may not - unless you're very lucky - stock Royal Game. Howvere, I know that Gwynne's corner Shop in Colehill still has a few bottles left. It's about £7.99 for a litre, so it's not cheap - but it's definitely worth splurging out on if Kestrel Super-Strength Lager seems a bit underpowered for you ever since you had that fall near the canal.

I once heard a chef and an art-critic arguing on Radio 4 about whether cheffing could ever be an 'art'. The Critic said 'no', because the range of emotions you would seek to evoke with food are limited. Specifically, he said until someone describes your food as "harrowing" and you take it as a compliment, then food will never be an art form.

With that in mind Royal Game is truly high art, and will help you transcend the boundaries of mundane reality in the way only great works can do. The label boasts that it's "The Finest Blend", and you start to realise that this is no idle boast, that this blended whiskey can achieve things that pandering, people pleasing single malts could never do. Initially, the taste is a surprise. You're going to be taken on a journey though your childhood. The drink skilfully evokes worming medicine, TCP and the kind of toxic paint people kept telling you not to drink. Listen to them no more! You're an adult now and this is your prize to seize.

The first half litre is fairly agreeable, if tinged with a longing melancholy for lost days. This is merely a set up that will make the second half that much more powerful and moving (like the classic novel The Outsider, with which Royal Game shares many themes, it is meant to be consumed in one sitting). After that - sort of pleasant - first half, things start to become undone. Your vision starts to waver, and a deep dread starts to build. People will start getting in your face at this point, asking you questions you can't answer (eg, "are you alright?"). They may even try to take the Royal Game away. You may find that even if you want them to, they won't be able to take it from your hands. Push them away, head to the woods, be alone now. You'll find, at this point that your memory of your life collapses. Anything pleasant you felt before is smashed into a flat haze of blind existential fear and anger, and that there is no 'child' you anymore, no hopeful cherub, no ambitious teenager, these beings aren't within you, they're not 'you' They're just a memory, and all that's left of them is a screaming, sobbing man lying in the woods clutching an empty bottle of whiskey, and in time, he will be gone too. None of it matters, and before long, no one will care or remember. This is the royal game and whether you want to or not, it's one you will be forced to play.”