QI tonight, in a series devoted to the letter H, focussed on all things horrible. One of the things included was the Sourtoe Cocktail. It reminded me that I have actually drunk one. Here is the relevant bit from my other blog.
... rather than end up completely broke in the Casino a few of us strolled down Queen Street to the Downtown Hotel in search of another of those quaint ten minute old traditions - the ‘Sourtoe’ cocktail. Now without being unduly cynical an easier quicker scam for making money was never dreamed up by anyone. The ‘legend’ has it that a group of riverboat captains played a joke on another who was something of a braggart by convincing him that it was traditional to drink down a shot of spirits containing the pickled remains of a human toe lost by a prospector due to frostbite. In the Downtown Hotel not only do they pull the same stunt on dozens of tourists every night they charge them for the privilege AND make them buy their own shot. Strange how knowing you are being conned doesn’t stop you though. At least half of our group, me included, swelled their coffers and from the queue behind us they were clearly going to have a profitable night’s toe sucking.
There must have been something wrong with either the tequila or the toe though because by the time I’d added it to the dozen or so beers I’d consumed already and the extra couple of shots I had afterwards I was feeling quite unsteady on my feet. Nevertheless the advanced state of inebriation that were all in as we re-crossed the river and walked to camp through the trees did have some advantages. To begin with we were making enough noise to scare away a hundred bears and anyway we were at the stage where we didn’t really care if they ate us although someone did remark that the joke about the bells sounded even less amusing now than it had before.
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