Brash and bold global party celebrates 250 years of Ireland's most famous export, writes PAUL CULLEN
MY GOODNESS, my Guinness, what a party. As birthdays go, yesterday’s celebration of 250 years of Ireland’s most famous export was brash and bold, as big and global as the brand itself.
You sense Arthur Guinness, the man whose ambition started it all in 1759, would have approved. The pint of plain got the expected rousing toast from thousands of VIPs who gathered in the St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin last night to mark the day.
Welsh crooner Tom Jones led the festivities in a crowded Hop 13 by raising a plastic pint-glass in honour of Arthur at exactly 17:59. With a rendition of It’s Not Unusual, the party was on.
This was a global television event aimed at buttressing Guinness’s place in the marketplace more than a sentimental celebration of the brewery’s place in Dublin history. Simultaneously, the world’s most famous stout was being toasted at ceremonies in New York, Lagos and Kuala Lumpur, and in pubs throughout the world.
Diageo, the multinational owners of Guinness, predicted that 50 million people around the world would join in the toast. If even a fraction of that number is achieved, it will be a marketing coup for the company.
With so much going on, it was hard to work out what was going on. The events organised for “Arthur’s Day”, as it was dubbed by Diageo, included the invite-only party at the Guinness Storehouse, four major gigs elsewhere in Dublin and 28 smaller gigs in pubs across the city.
In many pubs, pints of Guinness were selling for €2.50 and rumours abounded of “surprise” appearance by celebrity performers in various venues. Earlier in the day, Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood joined his son Jessie for an impromptu jam in the window of the BT2 store on Grafton Street.
For staff in the brewery, yesterday was a normal working day, at least until tea-time when 500 workers and suppliers were invited to watch proceedings on a giant screen.
The celebs present were seriously on message. Crooner Jamie Cullum told us Guinness was “a good drink if you’re a singer, something to do with the vocal cords”.
David Gray waxed lyrical about being in Dublin again: “When I see the Liffey rolling by, smell that Dublin air and have a first pint of Guinness . . . ah!”
The balm bored journalists waiting in a “media pen” by the red carpet; one asked a minder if he could find a “vocalist” by the name of Brian Cowen and a “folk singer” named Mary Coughlan.
“He’s not on my list,” said the earnest PR type, riffling through his pics of the performers, “but I’ll try to get them for you.”
But then the real Brian Cowen arrived in a flurry of handlers. The Taoiseach paid tribute to “an iconic Irish brand” and said he was looking forward to a good night, but not too good. Asked if he’d stay for a drink, he said he didn’t have the time; too much work and all that. But then he relented: “You always have the one.” Well, it was free after all.
Tánaiste Coughlan swept in shortly after her boss, wearing a tangerine jacket, or so it had been described by Enda Kenny earlier in the day. She paid her own tribute to “one of the best brands in the world”, then vowed to be abstemious and claimed not to have any hair to let down. Kenny, too, vowed not to have much of the “black stuff”, pleading an outbreak of meetings.
Even Tom Jones was in sober mood. He reminisced about his first drink as a young’un – a Guinness shandy at his father’s workingman’s club – but warned about taking drink “to the extreme”. His cure for a Guinness hangover? “A hairy dog.”