Hic! An email lands in Monkey’s inbox with a breakdown of what booze the BBC prefers to buy. Between 1 January and 31 December last year it spent almost £46,000 on alcohol but a breakdown reveals it paid £10,059.75 on red wine, £15,161.25 on white, £2,430.82 on sparkling wine and just over £15,000 on beers, ales and cider. Monkey’s favourite stats from the very detailed list (revealed in a freedom of information request from What Do They Know) shows it bought 5,188 bottles of Peroni Nastro, 16 bottles of Bombay Sapphire gin, 62 bottles of Mountain View rosé, 597 bottles of pinot grigio, 197 bottles of Codorniu Brut cava and (Monkey’s favourite) three bottles of Chase potato vodka at £31.10 a bottle. Cheers! But BBC does not stand for British Boozing Corporation, oh no, for as the corporation pointed out abstemiously: “The BBC sometimes provides hospitality, equating to about £2 per employee per year, at events like press screenings or to programme guests and, on very exceptional occasions, to some staff.” Whoever ordered the potato vodka has had their chips then.
