IF YOU are interested in a history lecture and discovering everything that has ever happened about alcohol since the beginning of time, shaken up with a cocktail of excruciatingly bad puns, then this might be the show for you.

Drinks journalists Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham's theme is to 'drink less, but drink better,' and the lesson is taught through an intoxicating time-travelling journey, laced with five drinks to cheer the audience on its way.

Our education began with two monkeys descending from the trees, one with a beer can in its mouth as we were offered half a can each of craft lager. Human discovered early on that we are the only animals that tolerate and make our own alcohol and the ancients were brewing in ceramic urns, chucking in anything that would ferment.

Moving swiftly on, with the help of a game audience member, we discovered that beer goggles make anyone more attractive and the theory was tested at his expense after each of the next four shots we imbibed.

As we sipped our nips of Icelandic vodka, Adnams Copper House gin from Suffolk and Talisker whisky from Skye (10-year-old), the alco-demics, slipping into costume changes including Jesus just wearing a pair of underpants, attempted to prove that the best musicians and composers, religions and the good guys all embraced alcohol (a bit of a stretch that vodka-loving Stalin was good and teetotal Hitler wasn't).

I was grateful to discover the sweet caramel-vanilla notes of the Diplomatico rum from Venezuela, delicious served neat.

The funniest lines were delivered by an audience member who had been thrown out of her school art class for being rubbish, who was given a glass of green liquid and told it was absinthe. She was asked to draw like Vincent van Gogh, thus proving that the hallucinogenic tipple was a crucial element of the impressionists' genius.

By the time the last shot was supped some of the audience had got into the spirit of the show and joined a conga. We made our excuses and escaped into the night.

You can catch The Thinking Drinkers' last show in York tomorrow at 5pm.

Catherine Turnbull