“Leigh, that’s a hate crime!” my sister Jessica lamented after I teased this article on my Instagram with a photo of me chugging a Guinness with a fluorescent base.
My beverage of choice was, of course, a ‘Gonster’. This wonderfully-named and nuclear-waste-coloured drink is the product of some insane person, or people, on TikTok who woke up and thought one day: “Let’s f**k with the Irish”.
It goes without saying that Guinness is an historic and much-loved drink on the island of Ireland, and further afield. I must have chugged thousands in my time, and I have designs on thousands more.
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But I might have to draw a line under my Gonster days, as it tastes like a pub floor after a Saturday night and left my stomach feeling like the physical embodiment of that one Jackson Pollock painting.
(Image: Leigh McManus/Daily Star)
When my other sister Jennifer got married last August the English boyfriend of one of her close pals caused near-bedlam when he suggested I drink a weird Guinness concoction.
The Yorkshireman stared me dead in the eye and said: “You know what works well with a Guinness head?”
At that moment the hum in the room ground to a halt, cutlery clinked and everyone turned around. Was this man actually about to mess with the tried and tested black stout that we all loved so much?
At this point I was about 10 Guinness deep and all ears. He suggested a rum and coke…with a nice fluffy Guinness head.
(Image: PA)
Panic spread across the faces of onlookers. I accepted this challenge.
So, once more unto the breach, I gulped it down. A bead of sweat lurching across my brow as my Adam’s Apple deposited the red slime into my body.
I liked it, but every time I tell a fellow Irishman this story they look at me in disgust. I’ve been cast out of true Guinness-drinking circles and I am left to roam the streets with post-modern takes on the classic, alone. Forever.
So naturally, when my boss suggested I p*ss off a load of my mates by drinking a Gonster, I accepted.
(Image: Leigh McManus/Daily Star)
I enlisted the help of photographer pal Eamonn and cheerleader Peter who was also brave enough to take a sip. But it was no rum-Guinness alloy.
The moment I cracked the tin of Guinness I knew I was in trouble. I decided to go the discount route and buy two of them from the bargain bucket.
They had gone out of date on the day of my challenge, May 16, and this was evidenced in the brown bubbles that sprang out of the cans like the curls of cherubs.
But there was nothing angelic about the taste after I poured the nuclear ‘Ultra Paradise’ Monster Energy in, and topped it with my archaic Guinness.
(Image: Leigh McManus/Daily Star)
I felt like Neil Armstrong as I took my first sip, pawing around in the unknown looking for something familiar.
The green gunk from the Monster rushed to the front of the glass and slid right up the edge to meet my lips at the same time as the foam of the stout.
“Pleasant,” I thought after being greeted by the medley of sugary flavour and a smooth cream.
The reality soon set in. I took a few more sips and soon felt like a caged ape was trying to rip its way out of my stomach.
(Image: Leigh McManus/Daily Star)
Might I add, I did this right before a game of seven-a-side football where I seemed to be propelled around the pitch by the resulting farts. Sorry.
One friend on Instagram asked me what the “flavour notes” were. I’ve settled on: dried earth, liquidated sugar cane and of course, pub floor.
“Good luck to you!” my girlfriend sarcastically quipped when I told her what I’d be drinking. “Don’t come crying to me about your stomach afterwards.”
She was right. I fear I have done both my stomach, and my reputation, lasting damage.
(Image: Leigh McManus/Daily Star)
“Sacriledge!” one Instagram follower barked. A cousin told me he had unfriended and unfollowed me, and that he no longer knows me.
A Galway man called me a “sick individual” and several others told me to “f*** off”.
“Get yourself sectioned please,” another so-called friend chimed in, while another added that she “hopes everything is OK at home”.
Everything at home is fine, except my stomach. To conclude, only do this at home if you want to feel like your gut is flying around in the Large Hadron Collider and you’d like to ostracize yourself from your Irish mates.
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