Jan 21, 2018 3 min read

The story goes that a man of advanced years – in his late 80s – having never poisoned himself with alcohol, tobacco, or a high-calorie diet, consented to a temperance society’s request that he sign a statement saying his abstention from these vices was why he had lived so long.

He was out on his porch when members of that temperance society arrived, and as he was about to sign their statement, there was a loud noise inside his house.

“What was that noise?” one temperance society member asked him. “Oh, that’s just my dad and his pals following their steak dinner by taking a pipe and getting roaring drunk again.”

Randolph Churchill, son of Winston Churchill, might have related to that story because, as is well known, his dad was a prodigious cigar smoker, drinker and gourmand. He smoked as many as a dozen cigars a day, preferring the extra aromatic, but extra strong, Cuban cigars.

He also drank a good deal, and although he wasn’t an alcoholic – he could hold his liquor and his ever-present brandy and soda was usually more soda than brandy – he often had wine with breakfast, wine and champagne with lunch, several brandies and soda in the mid-afternoon, and all three for dinner, plus an after-dinner cognac.

As for his eating habits, breakfast would include not just eggs and toast, but pheasant and steak, and a side of potatoes. Lunch usually started with a fish dish, and ended several courses later with a rich dessert, all washed down with a wide variety of spirits.

Dinner, which often included many prominent guests, was usually a sumptuous repast beginning with a soup course, a salad, a fish course, a meat course, sides of vegetables and starches, and finally a dessert and cheese course, again washed down with wine and champagne. Following that, Churchill would often repair to his bedroom where, a cognac in hand and cigar smoke trailing him as he paced, he would work into the morning, dictating to his overworked assistants memoranda, speeches, and even chapters of whatever book he was writing.

Of his drinking, he said, “I believe I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” Of his eating he said, “All the food faddists (healthy eaters) I have ever known have died young after a long period of senile decay.” Of his cigar smoking, he said, “I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am 200 percent form.”

Winston Churchill, drinker, smoker, prodigious eater – and the man upon whose shoulders the survival of Great Britain and Europe rested during World War II – died this week in 1965. He was 90 years old.