Fact of the Day: Blur’s Alex James and His Champagne Habit
Blur bass player Alex James might be a respectable cheesemaker, writer, TV host, horticulturalist and space enthusiast these days, but back at the height of Britpop, he was a drunk. A very, very, very drunk drunk.
One of his vices was Champagne. In 1996, James claims that he alone was responsible for consuming 1% of all the Champagne imported into the UK.
The best I can tell, the UK brought in at least 30 million bottles in 1996. If Alex isn’t full of shit, that means he went through 300,000 bottles in 12 months.
Really, Alex? Really?
He might have purchased that many bottles, I highly doubt he managed to drink 25,000 bottles a month. That would work out to over 800 bottles a day. I call BS.
Yeah, it says he "claims to be responsible for 1% of the UK’s Champagne imports in 1996" which doesn't mean he drank them all. It's not unreasonable to suspect he was just throwing massive parties where he bought insane amounts of Champagne. Probably still an over-estimate, but I like to think he did make a dent – and I just wanted to point out the slight inaccuracy.
Blur did seem to make ridiculous amounts of money in their heyday. Isn't there an old post on your blog here Alan, about one of the blur members collecting really expensive bikes or something? And he had a ton of them? I can see the extravagant parties reasoning.