5 Οκτωβριου

Quiet at the back! No sniggering. Today is World Teachers Day, a chance to celebrate the role this often-maligned profession plays in all our lives.

The bartenders of yore recognized the importance of a good all-round education. Which is why some unsung hero created the Princeton cocktail, made originally with Old Tom gin and named it for the Ivy League college. We recommend you mix one, enjoy, and praise the lord that you don't have to work with kids all day. If you do, you'll find the quantities double up quite easily. Cheers!

Anniversary of the first Beatles single release

This day in 1962, The Beatles released their very first single: Love Me Do. Amazingly, given its iconic status today, it only reached 17 in the UK charts: their second single, Please Please Me, went to number one.

Lennon and McCartney had worked on the song when they first formed the band as schoolchildren, and The Beatles had already been gigging for two years, mainly in Liverpool and Hamburg. Within a year, Beatlemania was in full swing, the first time Britain had seen teenage girls screaming and crying at the prospect of getting close to their idols. Within two years they'd cracked the States. And within seven years John Lennon would have left the band for good.

We're toasting The Beatles, and Sir Paul McCartney, now an official national treasure, with an aptly-named Love Me Flip. Do join us.