Anthropomorphic

Furry Polar Bear

Character Portrait

Erm Wotsischops

Each morning, upon waking up to a defibrillating fit of spasmodic night terrors, the bloodied and bandaged anthropomorphic furry polar bear, Erm Wotsischops, tries to come to his senses with a few swigs of his ever-faithful reprieve, Mithridates, 99% proof, with the slogan aptly reading: “The dose makes the poison.” Although he knows each conk-rattling gobful is only sugaring the pill, it’s enough to get his eyes to stop swiveling about long enough to ascertain that he’s put his trousers on backwards (yet again). It is not, however, the flash-backs that have him held hostage at the far end of his wits — his hippocampus has those wailing banshees of the bygone safely pinned down and memory-holed in the basement of the subconscious — but rather, the flash-forwards. The stroboscopic sixth-sense that gives him the heads-up of what, or even, who is to come. Diagnosed as Pre-traumatic stress disorder, by Dr. Ralph Whiplash, Erm has come to rely on these pulsating divinations for key strategic insights as to what the next day has in store for him, and for good reason, for he is, of course, the commander-in-chief of the fermented gongpit of a pub, The Knotted Knacker. A fissure on the cornhole of society, cartographers have long been careful to leave this cack-bucket undemarcated from every map of Anthroxville ever produced, for it serves as something of a leper colony for those deemed surplus to requirements; the down-and-outers; the unconscionable and the incorrigible. A last refuge for the chronically cabbaged. Here, the punters don’t choose to drink, but rather, the drink chooses them; and thus likewise with Erm, the trauma is pre-ordained.

One particular morning, the flash-forwards were particularly gnarly, even by their hellish standards. Undaunted however, the furry polar bear dutifully started off the day just like any other, composing himself with a couple kidney-cannons of Mithridates, before inspecting his battle-hardened battalion of pint-slingers, reciting the Knacker’s Code of Honor, imparting upon them the revised strategy for the next 18 hours of service, and observing a minute's silence to honor the staff who were lost to the previous night’s onslaught. If a barman says he is not afraid of being glassed, throttled, or chokeslammed by a sloshed-up mouth-foamer, he is either lying, crazy, or an enlisted employee at this satanic saloon. All comrades-in-arms, this band-of-bartenders is the bravest, most indomitable special-tactical unit of jarheads that Erm has ever had the privilege of paying minimum wage. Dispatching both the pints and the clientele with a seasoned helping of stoic savoir-faire, they act without passion and without hate, diligently performing their duties despite their chronically dwindling numbers; for what was once an impenetrable phalanx of well-drilled hoplites manning the ramparts has in recent years shrunk to a worryingly thin ellipsis of frazzled intoxologists slogging it out to the last. They have seen it all in this place; the rum riots, the pilsner putsches, the pear brandy pogroms. Some are even veterans of the Great Gin Fizz Jihad of many a year ago (lest we forget). Having survived the unspeakable carnage of these ill-famed annals of Knacker lore, you would think that nothing would phase them anymore, and up until this infamous day, you would have been right.

Anointed with an old-fangled sign reading: 'No swearing, you cunts', the bar resembles more of a military bunker than anything, fortified with sandbags, barbed wire, and various munitions. It is effectively an island, accessible only via a rickety drawbridge (the first of its kind apparently) opening up over a deep foaming moat of non-alcoholic brew (kryptonite to his clientele) that wraps around a good few meters in front of the perimeter of the bar, separating the realm of the sane from the domain of the blotto-brain. This visionary piece of engineering handiwork was installed by Erm's great-grandfather, Yahno Wotsischops, and to this day still serves to kettle the boozehounds into a single-file chokepoint, effectively stemming the otherwise unstoppable tide of drunken yobbos giving it large. Further aiding the defensive efforts is a strategic obstacle course of distractions that all assailants must somehow resist on their scramble to the bar, starting off with hypnotic colonnades of blaring slot machines, ranks of brain-pickling pinball tables, and sheaves of bimbo-loaded tabloids. Make it past these, and they still have to contend with the seductive siren call of the dartboards, the pool tables, and TV screens.

You’ll notice a defining feature of The Knotted Knacker is the startling lack of ladyfolk. There have been no confirmed sightings of a female or anything that could come close to resembling one since time immemorial. This isn’t out of choice or policy, quite the opposite in fact, for there have been many concerted efforts made and initiatives launched to coax some skirt in through its doors. No, the truth of the matter is that the ladettes and lasses of Anthroxville just simply do not want to play ball when it comes to frequenting this tavern of torment, and who can blame them? For their sense of sense is far more biologically fine-tuned than is the case with the blokes, who appear genetically possessed by some messianic hankering for self-destruction; and hence the multiple calls of the void have fortunately so far remained unanswered by the sisterhood.

Now, say what you will about The Knotted Knacker, and many have rightfully said much, but one thing you can’t fault them on is selection. They pull no punches when it comes to variety, offering a wide range of libations, such as the fan-favorite, Pant-Pisser; the full-throated, Face-Pegger; the hopsy-hurvey, Taint-Twister; and of course, the prayer-answering, Chode-Stretcher. They even cater to the more discerning boozer (a rare breed in this place), stocking a number of imported brewskis, like Baader-Meinhof (once you have your first taste of this little whistle-wetting number, you find yourself chugging it everywhere); and Zugzwangler (a beer in which the compulsion to take another guzzled snootful puts its drinkers at a decisive disadvantage in pretty much every aspect of their life). In fact, the alchemists at Zugzwangler held The Knotted Knacker’s insatiable clientele in such regard, that they summoned the furry polar bear with a deal in which they would extend his line of credit ad infinitum in return for exclusive marketing rights; so now the ashtrays, beer mats, and even the urinals, all proudly bear the gothic typeface slogan: Vorsprung durch Trunksucht. Whether related or purely coincidental, a number of curious cases have been increasingly common of late, where punters get so goose-steppingly kaisered on these teutonic tipples, that when they finally sober up, they are still completely fritz-faced, can’t tell left from reich, and speak only an obscenely aggressive dialect of German.

It is common knowledge that every watering hole in Anthroxville worth its salt must have its own philosopher-in-residence, and The Knotted Knacker is no exception, with the title going to the pie-eyed empiricist with no name. Known simply as ‘The Bollocked One’ (or Bollocks for short), this sloppy savant remains hooked up to a dialysis machine next to the bubonic restrooms, unable to move, function, or do anything much other than soil himself. Considered the embodiment of true enlightenment, he is held in adulation as the beau idéal of the alcoholic; a deiform to which all lagged-up lager-louts should aspire towards. Punters regularly pay homage to this great mind in the form of tithings, and in return, he will impart slurred piffles of wisdom such as: “I’m drink, therefore I drunk,” “The head that spins twice as fast spins half as long,” and “Where the fuck am I?” whenever somebody comps him a Taint-Twister.

Among the Knacker’s other venerable constituents are such pillars of society as the homicidal headbanger, John Knuckle, the debt-collecting demigod, Victor Wallop, and the fraudulent au fait, Gregory Fromage. There are also the celebrated pub athletes, the wet-brained dart-throwing wonder, Sid Blitzkrieg, whose talents are all the more rousing considering he often can’t stand straight without suffering alcohol-induced vertigo; and the thrice-divorced arm-wrestling jumbo, Roy Bibbowski, whose eulogized right bicep is so formidable, that it’s rumored to have its own field of gravitation. On occasion, when he’s not out practicing what he so dearly preaches, The Knotted Knacker’s literary laureate, Orville Stonker can be found tenderly nursing a Chode-Stretcher as he gives a live reading of his epoch-defining, autobiographical how-to manual, The Art of the Steal. It is a common sight to see Marty Shuffle jackknifed over a slot machine, whispering sweet nothings into the flashing lights as he dongs the various buttons in a futile attempt at cajoling it into paying back his week's wages; as well as the ever-shonky Hans Hüftgold up to his usual tricks of pretending to come to the aid of the most paralytic punters, whilst secretly going through their pockets. The plucky gear-merchant, Jackson Jiffy, can invariably be scoped going from table to table, trying to offload some low-quality dope onto some low-quality individuals; whilst the temperamental, Axel Kettlebell, will more often than not be yoking some unfortunate guzzler in a hydraulic headlock for having the temerity of looking at him like he thinks he’s hard or something.

It is an entire ecosystem; a cross-contaminating petri-dish of pathological organisms who each become more resistant to any notion of moral-integrity or common-decency with every pint-chugging mutation. While most are familiar with the adverse effect of drinking on an empty stomach, The Knotted Knacker is a showcase in the infinitely more disastrous effect of drinking on an empty mind. Erm would know better than anybody, since he has been watching on with the morbid curiosity of a nihilistic epidemiologist for longer than he wishes he could remember. In fact, the wretched pub has been in the Wotsischops' clan for generations and it has become something of a family tradition to try and offload the bunghole onto some other unwitting family member and make a run for it. This is exactly what happened to the furry polar bear at the age of just thirteen. His father, Thabloke, stitched him up a treat, and hats off to him, for Erm knows given the opportunity he would have pulled the exact same stunt. As it turns out, there is some archaic legal quirk of Anthroxville’s law of primogeniture, which stipulates that on (and only on) the 13th birthday of your firstborn son, the deeds to a pub (debts included) can be passed over – under the strict condition that the little blighter readily accepts the role as evidenced by his witnessed pulling of a pint on that very same day before the clock strikes midnight. If only he’d known then, with half a mouthful of birthday cake, what he shortly discovered about five seconds later. Shanghaied by his old man, hook, line, and sinker. He still remembers him simultaneously laughing, crying, and shaking his arse as he bid him adieu and skedaddled out those doors, never to be seen or heard from again. That was that, and Erm has been stuck in bondage with the place as an indentured pint-puller ever since.

The bleeping monotone of the same song on repeat has become something of an institutional anthem here, parping out from the kicked-in jukebox which wallows next to a lacerated (and often upended) pool table. Erm has tried everything – even disconnecting the bloody thing; yet it still continues tooting out that same godforsaken jingle (if you can even call it that), which fittingly sounds like the one continuous morse-coded cry of SOS, over and over again. “You and me both, pal,” the furry polar bear thinks to himself whenever failing to get the jukebox to cease and desist, “You and me both.” In fact, it was the jukebox which gave the second forewarning that something was not quite right on this particular morning, with its tune inexplicably changing to what now sounded like the staggered palpitations of an electrocardiogram’s heart-beat monitor. The minute's silence (barring the background SOS distress signal) had just concluded when the arterial chirping began. Erm was just about to instruct one of his intoxologists to man the windlass and lower the drawbridge in order for him to take a closer look, when his attention was quickly drawn to a much more immediate concern: the sudden cannonade of booming thuds reverberating through the pub's blast-proof doors.

Just as in his flash-forwards, the vibrations tore through the whole building, causing the walls to rumble and the lights to flicker. At one point, they even sent The Bollocked One’s glass eye scudding out of its socket and across the floorboards, shortly followed by his pair of false teeth. “So it begins…,” muttered Erm, steadying himself as the shockwave from one of the imperious thuds came close to flooring him. All the staff quickly congregated into a defensive formation at the near end of the bar, quietly surmising amongst themselves in hushed tones. With the windows all long since boarded up, one of the pint-slingers made a lunge for the periscope (another invention of Yahno's), gripping on tight as he peered through. “Holy Moneyshot...” he pronounced in disbelief. “What’s the sitrep out there?” Erm called out, crouched down as bottles and glasses came smashing down around him. “It would appear that a swarming ant-hill of incredibly drunk and incredibly fricked-off liver-luggers are laying siege to our pub. Some have even made it onto the roof,” came the response. There was a crashing sound from above. “He squinted back into the periscope. “Yep, see, there they are, got us completely surrounded.”

Speculation as to the reason why such a siege was taking place was shortly answered when on the TVs, breaking news was being reported that one of east Anthroxville’s cherished football teams, Bottlejob F.C., had been forced to forfeit their crucial, death-or-glory game in the struggle against relegation versus sworn rivals, Match-Fixers United, scheduled for that afternoon. Adding insult to injury, they were also due to be rawdogged with an unprecedented 4200-point deduction. Although details were still coming in, word was that, in what could only be described as an act of desperation, a number of Bottlejob’s players and coaching staff, including manager Cory Numbnuts, had taken the matchday officials hostage at knife-point and demanded that they please, for the love of all that is holy, find it within themselves not to fix the upcoming match. A reasonable and long overdue request, one would think, and for a while it looked as though they were on the cusp of pulling off the coup of the century with the Anthroxville Football Soccer League's (AFSL)  governing body seemingly prepared to acquiesce to their demands. However, in true Bottlejob fashion, the cowards lost their nerve in the last minute of negotiations and released the officials without securing any binding commitments, and were now being made an example of with a plastering by the AFSL. With yet another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, the long-suffering fans were going absolutely berserk, and having already drunk all of Anthroxville’s other institutions (including every last one of Mario Miff's Miff Inconvenience Stores) dry, had descended upon The Knotted Knacker for one final hurrah. 

“Game’s gone,” cursed Erm with a mournful shake of the head. He was in two minds about grabbing a pitchfork and showing his solidarity with the rioters, before quickly remembering that it was his pub which would be, for some inexplicable reason, bearing the brunt of the outrage. “Right lads, you know the drill. The only thing more dangerous than a paggared pisshead is an increasingly sober one; so if we have any hope of making it out of this mess in one piece, it is to keep the neck oil flowing.” The staff nodded in silent agreement. “Get them so buggered they start seeing double, then triple, then the four corners of the world, then no further than the end of their nose, then...then you get the idea. And remember, in for a penny in for a pint, so no half measures.”

After a couple more resounding slams, the groaning pub doors finally caved, and in crashed a churning convulsion of chanting hooligans, eyes-rolling (much like Erm’s first thing in the morning) and sinews twitching as they made their staggered stampede towards the bar. On Erm’s orders, the staff fired a sling-shotted opening salvo of pre-poured flaming whiskey shooters into the marauding free-for-all, but to little effect, and they watched on slack-jawed as the belching swarm stumbled past the first line of defense (the obstacle course of distractions) with drunken indifference – not even so much as stopping for a second to take a cheeky peek at a tabloid. After absorbing another couple rounds of whiskey shooters, the mob arrived at the moat – the pièce de résistance of The Knotted Knacker’s fortifications.

Never before surmounted, the rhapsodized moat had saved Erm and his staff’s bacon on countless occasions, and it served as the linchpin of their defensive strategy. Its physical dimensions have always been the pub’s greatest hope of maintaining any sense of order, as it is too wide to simply jump over; and its depth and contents make it too perilous even for the most stout-hearted lout to attempt to swim across. So you can imagine their horror when, in what could only be presumed to be an act of rabid martyrdom, the first to reach the moat fell to their hands and knees and started slurping their way through it. “It’s non-alcoholic, you knobheads!” Erm cried out as he threw a lemon juicer, impressively striking one particularly deranged-looking slurper between the eyes and sending him sploshing down to meet his maker in the swampy nectar below. However, before long, the moat dropped by a considerable level and the other members of the horde jumped up to their necks and started slowly wading through towards the bar, gnashing their teeth as they went. Meanwhile, a number of the groaning, now bloated self-sacrificing guzzlers linked arms and rolled into the moat, bobbing over to the other side with their new-found buoyancy and forming what appeared to be a live bridge of dipso ingenuity.

“They’re sentient…” one of the bar staff whispered, as the intifada chaotically bundled over and across the  bridge. “Pistons at the ready!” shouted Erm, kissing each bicep as his hands tensely gripped both pumps before him. Despite the limited number of staff, he had been able to just about muster a last-minute version of the bar formation known as Volley Service, first devised during the mayhem of The Great Gin Fizz Jihad (may their name liveth forevermore), in which a strategic setup of at least two (preferably more) consecutive rows of bar staff are arrayed in close-knit preparation for the oncoming wave of thirsty punters. The first row is tasked with focusing their efforts solely on pulling pints for the initial batch of customers first in line as quickly as possible; whilst the second rank covers them by fending off the most unruly patrons trying to jump the line, bar, or each other, with a broom handle; whilst also attentively taking orders. Once the first round of drinks have been dispatched, the two ranks seamlessly rotate to switch places, allowing the newly instated first rank to fulfill their orders efficiently and without any confusion (“Sorry chief, was that a Pant-Pisser or a Taint-Twister?”), whilst the second rank can gain key situational reconnaissance on any imminent threats to their station, who to watch out for, and also take orders ready for when they rotate back in. It is a revolutionary system in crowd control, and looked to be somehow holding its own against the crushing pileup of customers slamming against the bar. “Bravo Zulu, boys! Bravo Zulu!” Erm hollered out with a patriarchal pang of paternal pride as he took stock of his gallant legionaries keeping their nerve and executing the strategy with dexterous perfection.

Casualties are, however, an unavoidable inevitability in this line of business, and no matter how well-oiled your service strategy, it is, unfortunately, a statistical certainty that a number of staff will find themselves being hurled over the bar by the scruff of their neck and duly given a pasting of a lifetime on the other side. More troubling yet still is what usually comes next: an ancient process known as Initiation, whereupon their battered pulp of a body is then encircled by a frenzied cluster of punters in some pagan-like ritual and waterboarded with a diabolical amount of beer and other such beverages, bantered beyond recognition with a host of unintelligible chants, and given a few more kickings until they miraculously metamorphose into a newly-fangled yobster themselves. It is truly a sight to behold, and having undergone the inexplicable resurrection, they are almost entirely unrecognizable as they make for the very bar they had moments before sworn to defend. Colleagues can only watch on in despair as their former comrade throws insults, chairs, and haymakers in their direction. While some are born hooligans and some achieve hooliganism, these are those who have hooliganism thrust upon them. It can happen to the best of us and has no doubt already happened to the worst. In fact, many laying siege to The Knotted Knacker on this fabled morning were ex-employee casualties from previous offensives.

Having gone through a successful few iterations of the Volley Service schema, Erm rotated back again, and wielding his trusty sink-plunger, sent a good few plungings into the curdling escarpment of crazed customers trying to mount the bar. He was on a roll, and the head-bopping that accompanied his endeavors suggested a certain air of worldly chutzpah as he went about his duties. “And what’ll you be having, champ?” he called out, pointing towards a tank-top-donning bruiser. “Piña colada,” came the gritted response. This caught Erm off guard, and he cocked his head ninety degrees sideways. “You what mate?” he inquired. “Just a piña colada, cheers,” the tank-top reaffirmed, cracking his knuckles and panting. Pausing to consider, Erm pressed on, “Come again?” with a frown. “You heard, you prick.” Erm’s attention was momentarily turned to another customer who was kicking off about his Face-Pegger being flat, before shortly returning to the tank-top. “You’re yanking my chain, now be serious.” There was an indignant pause. “Piña…colada,” came the mouthed reply, slowly. Erm gave him a suspicious once-over. “Are you some kind of poofter or what?” he ventured. Naturally, the tank-top accused Erm of being a cunt, and took a swing at him. Now this rubbed Erm up the wrong way, and he did what any self-respecting publican would, and plunged this undercover nancyboy in the face like there was no tomorrow. He wouldn’t be tolerating such nonsense in this mecca of masculinity; this bethlehem of blokedom. No chance. A sudden silence rippled through the pub. “And let that be a warning to all you ponces,” he declared, proudly waving his weapon of choice in the air.

Regrettably for the furry polar bear, this tank-top was none other than Bottlejob F.C’s set-piece specialist coach himself (Erm thought he had recognized those deltoids from somewhere); a machismo messiah who had once taken on a whole stand of Hoof and Hope Athletic fans by himself, running up from out of the dugout, down the touchline, over the advertising boards and headfirst into the crowd, after a chant slagging off Bottlejob’s disgraceful freekick conversion rate rang out. By the time he was finally tranquilized with a seventh dart in the neck, he had hospitalized 32 fans, 6 security guards, and 3 of his own coaching staff, who had been clobbered senseless by his windmilling arms as they tried to help restrain him. He was already hooligan royalty before these heroics, and has been revered as a celestial being amongst Anthroxville’s goons and roughnecks ever since.

After a few tense seconds, the pub detonated into absolute pandemonium, making the hell in a handbasket that preceded it a balmy poolside martini by comparison. Erm tried to make himself heard over the spuming roars for justice that it was all just a terrible misunderstanding, and that there would be complimentary piña coladas on the house so long as everybody untwisted their knickers and put the jam back in their donut for just one second; but this gesture served only to rile them up even more, with accusations of whether he was trying to say they looked like a bunch of fairies or something, levied at the furry polar bear. “Alright, alright, how about a free round of Zugzwanglers then?” Erm retorted, but it was too late for any hopes of reasoning with this lot, and with the cheese already long past the point of sliding off its collective cracker, there wasn’t really much that could be done other than to take a deep glug of Mithradates and prepare for come what may.

At first, Erm was almost disappointed by the mob’s lack of imagination, as they appeared to simply ramp up the same old business of lobbing glasses, throwing haymakers, and hoisting the odd member of staff over the bar for a good pummeling (and subsequent Initiation) — just as before, only at a much higher rate of knots. “Is that all you got?!” he called out, as he artfully ducked yet another incoming brandy snifter. Unfortunately, as Erm and the rest of his crew would shortly discover, it was not—far from it in fact, and this was only a prelude of what was to come. Suddenly, The Bollocked One’s dialysis machine was sent spinning over the bar, wiping out a handful of the men manning the left flank; shortly followed by Bollocks himself, taking out a further few. The couple of remaining staff still standing were quickly submerged under a broiling palpitation of sweat-stained torsos crashing over the bar fist-first, and after a few seconds, the bogans had established a critical beachhead.

This development was a devastating blow to Erm's ambitions of making it out of this hellhole in one piece, and if he didn’t act quickly, then he would be biting the big one faster than you could say Cliff Bingo; so without a moment to spare he took another slosh of Mithradates, grabbed every mop-wielding member of staff he couldmu, and leading from the rear, shoved them down towards the breach to meet their bladdered belligerents head-on in their date with destiny. As would later be reported in Spencer Godwottery’s publication, Well Magazine, the commencing slugfest was one for the epics, with a dizzying confection of brain-busters, back-breakers, elbow-drops, and scrotum-chops being exchanged tit for tat in this narrow crucible of chaos; not to mention the double uppercuts and spinning headbutts which were charitably donated back and forth in equal measure by both parties. Erm craned his neck and looked on from pint-slinger to hooligan, and from hooligan to pint-slinger, and from pint-slinger to hooligan again; but already it was almost impossible to say which was which — other than the general direction they were launching each other in. Soon, however, it became clear that what the hooligans had in numbers, his dear hoplites were more than making up for in skill and finesse, and were slowly but surely driving them back over to the other side of the bar from whence they came. Another unignorable factor was the utterly comical blood alcohol level of the schnockered assailants, who, thanks to the well-drilled operation to get them as many drinks as humanly possible, were seemingly suffering as a result and exhibiting some of the most woeful hand-eye coordination Erm had ever witnessed. He even saw one knucklehead clock himself out cold with a clumsy wayward fist; whilst another, in the midst of celebrating a crumpling piledriver he had just executed, was still oblivious to the fact that it was his old mucker he had just KO’d.

Just as it looked as though they were on the cusp of heroically recapturing the left flank, a sudden avalanche of grunters from the rooftop made their belated entry onto the scene, gormlessly crashing down from up above with a plume of dust and rubble. Now, these new gatecrashing meatballs had other plans, and quickly showed themselves to be a different caliber of scrapper altogether, boasting much greater balance and accuracy compared to the orgy of drunken goons already duking it out – thanks to their relative sobriety – and they wasted no time in getting stuck into the royal rumble taking place. Their addition quickly tipped the balance back once more in favor of the yobs, and Erm looked on in horror as his once-indomitable platoon of jarheads were put to rout from every direction. Suddenly, one great hulking humdinger of a brute fell directly on him, somehow landing in an upright rodeo straddle on his back, and managed to cling on with one arm bound tightly around his neck; whilst the other treated the furry polar bear’s head to a raving compilation of beatdowns. In the hopes of dispatching this frisky Johnny-come-lately, Erm span around with an oafish pirouette, but the grip was too tight, and after a couple more wallops to the temple, his vision started to blur out and he lost his footing before falling face-first down to the ground. Over the faint flatlining bleep of the jukebox in the distance, he helplessly groaned out loud as a pack of hooligans pounced upon him and started dousing him with beer and banter, and he felt his body start contorting out of shape as the mind-melting machinations of the Initiation process began to take hold.

The following sequence of events has since become the stuff of Knacker legends, and Erm has personally made copies of the CCTV footage readily available for anybody who openly casts doubt on the plausibility of such unfoldings. If one squints hard enough, they can just about make out the wraithlike depiction of the furry polar bear, bruised and battered, slowly clambering to his feet and with a vacant stare, letting out an eruptive belch. There is no audio to accompany the footage, but even to those untrained in the craft of lipreading, he then clearly proceeds to chant the international yob rallying cry of “Who wants some?” a dozen or so times, with his arms out wide and head slung back, before rushing up and dropping one of the last remaining pint-slingers with the mother of all knees to the nards. However, as he stands akimbo over his supposed ex-underling reeling and spluttering on the floor, he can be seen for the briefest of seconds giving a sly but unmistakable wink. “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy,” Erm will gloat, pausing the tape at this exact frame to add gravitas to his well-rehearsed maxim for the benefit of whoever is watching. “And remember, every scrimmage is won before it is fought.”

With the day seemingly won for the hooligans, a toast is proposed by the apparently transmogrified-turncoat furry polar bear, and after much animated discussion, he descends down to the cellar, emerging to wild applause a few moments later as he juggles six large wooden crates, with “The dose makes the poison” stenciled on the sides. Even the tank-top appears to be in the jovial mood to let bygones be bygones, and embraces him with an emotional headlock. After wriggling free, Erm then lines up a long battalion of shot glasses along the bar and gets to work filling them up with his prized Mithridates. Salutations are made and then each member of the victorious horde bomb the shots in swaggering synchrony. Erm swiftly tops up the glasses, and they are dispatched much like the first. This goes on for a few rounds, however, at one point, just as Erm is once again about to refill, a sudden panic breaks out, and one by one, the hooligans start scrambling about, clutching their throats and hitting the deck. A number seem to have steam coming out of their eyes and ears; whilst a couple even appear to spontaneously combust into a haze of ethanol on their descent.

Erm is not only the last man standing: he comes out pretty much unscathed, albeit a little wobbly. A lifetime of self-medicating with increasing dosages of the gut-rotting Mithridates served to inoculate him from not only the misery of life at The Knotted Knacker or the maniacal clutches of the Initiation, but also, the mucosa-stripping slaughter of the Mithridates itself; a feat not even the most formidable drunkard could realistically ever aspire towards. The beau idéal of the true alcoholic: functionality; for the greatest trick ever pulled is convincing the world that they are entirely sober. However, for the mere mortals shuffling closer off their coils with every pickled visit to The Knotted Knacker, the old Anthroxville aphorism of yore still holds true: No drink, one problem; lots of drinks, many problems.