YOU SCREAM, I SCREAM, CREOLE SCREAM…

It was half past ten in the morning when the cleaner woke my brother up. He was

asleep under the wooden settle on the restaurant floor. Eight napkins had been draped

over him to form a makeshift and largely redundant bed sheet. This was December

and an octet of 10” by 10” serviettes would have offered little insulation from the

creeping of winter’s bitter dawn. Ironically, it was his choice of drink the previous

evening, one that had led directly to his current sleeping arrangements, that provided

internal warmth enough to stay Death’s hand. One of the final images that his

memory recorded before being prematurely shut down for the night, was me handing

him a Creole Scream.

The Creole Scream is the most important cocktail in the history of 1970s television.

(Pause) No, I can’t think of another important 1970s television cocktail either. At a

stretch, you could put the Cinzano that Leonard Rossiter repeatedly poured into Joan

Collins’s lap in second place. The Creole Scream, though was the plot device, the

deus ex machina that brought together Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in the first

episode of The Persuaders! In its gaudy, rubicund translucence lay a leitmotif for the

whole series.

As I recall, most liqueurs and digestifs in late sixites/early seventies television shows

seemed to have been blended into primary colours. Watch any later episode of The

Avengers featuring Patrick Newell’s “Mother” and every decanter on his office bar is

invariably filled with liquids made principally from neon. The Creole Scream is, by

virtue of its audacity and the pointed specifics of its construction, the Elvis Presley of

ITC drinkies.

Lord Brett Sinclair: the 15th Earl of Marnock, Harrovian, Ascot winner, Grand Prix

race driver etc, has arrived in Nice at the invitation of a mysterious benefactor. He

arrives at the hotel bar accompanying a beautiful and notably silent redhead. This

speechless young thing is actually the fifth girl Lord Sinclair has entertained since

pulling up in his ear-wax coloured Aston Martin DBS at the city limits. Four

nymphette hitchhikers have accompanied him thus far, all of them happy to

compensate this complete stranger for his trouble with the kind of oxygen-denying

tongue-gymnastics not usually seen until the office Christmas party.

Having abandoned this hot-legged quartet at the airport, Lord Sinclair leads his latest

conquest towards the bar in a startling, explosive tableau of high-end 1973 set design.

Without the courtesy of any kind of greeting, Lord Sinclair gives their order to the

barman. ‘Two Creole Screams, please.’ Clearly the poor devil remains in the dark.

‘Are you new here?’ asks Sinclair in disbelief. ‘Well let me tell you, apart from

women and dogs, a man’s best friend is a Creole Scream.’

Lord Sinclair fixes the barman with the look of a stern but benevolent teacher and

details his request without recourse to any notes or cocktail-themed idiot-guides. ‘A

jigger of white rum, a dash of bitters, chilled vermouth – chilled, not iced – and a

measure of grenadine. Then mix; stir in some crushed ice, shake, strain and pour.

Top it off with one olive.’

These measurements were followed to the letter, forty years after the initial broadcast,

in a small but popular French restaurant in north Wales. As devotees of Roger

Moore’s oeuvre, with a popular fondness for his 1970s repertoire, no other gift for my

brother’s 30th would have topped the recently released Persuaders DVD box set.

What better way to toast this pivotal birthday than with the very cocktail that

engendered the pairing of the Persuaders in the first place?

It is the olive element that proves problematic back in 1971. ‘Two olives,’ insists a

Bronx-accented American who overhears Lord Sinclair’s instructions. Sinclair,

askance at this damned colonial’s repeated attempts to update his recipe to the

wretched barman, makes clear his disgust, and before long they are smashing balsa-

wood stunt chairs into each other’s backs. Little does Lord Sinclair realise, but this

insistent guttersnipe is actually Daniel Wilde, a multi-millionaire in the oil trade who

looks like a mid-life crisis version of 60s Hollywood star Tony Curtis. Several

crimson cocktails later, the two bored playboys have teamed up to defend the poor

and defenceless (usually pretty blonde poor defenceless girls like Annette Andre and

Susan George).

And so down the hatch in the 21st century. The Grenadine remains the most

overbearing element in the Creole Scream, especially if you choose one that is top-

heavy with pomegranate. In the second, semi-fatal attempt, I upped the dosage of

Angostura bitters, which added more Creole to the Scream, especially while the rum

resurfaced upon the palate. There was an inescapable Proustian sensation that harked

back to the first (and last) time that I tried a Martini Rosso, which had me hankering

for a paprika sprinkled egg mayonnaise and a Supertramp album. This might be

explained by the fact that I was forced to use Martini for the vermouth instead of

Noilly Pratt. Like Lord Sinclair, neither my brother nor I opted for the ‘spectacle of

two olives bumping against each other.’

The Creole Scream features in many cocktail websites and a quick delve into

YouTube will unearth several toothsome barmen giving master-classes in its

preparation. All of which suggests that the Creole Scream has an antique and noble

lineage, stretching back perhaps to the plantation days of eighteenth century

Louisiana. A bayou classic, maybe? Its ingredients passed down through

generations in the great oral tradition? Er…nope.

‘I invented the Creole Scream,’ said legendary writer Brian Clemens, when I raised

the issue. ‘It is entirely 1) a fiction or 2) the product of an uncannily fertile and

perceptive mind.’ It was Clemens who wrote ‘Overture’, the pilot episode of The

Persuaders (when he wasn’t creating television classics like The Avengers and The

Professionals). Naturally, it is Clemens then who should bear the full weight of

responsibility in the matter of my comatose sibling? In Clemens’ own words, ‘Your

brother got it 50% right – yes it is supposed to reduce you to prostrate amnesia, but

no, to wake up under a wooden settle?! Best to drink your first sample in a nunnery,

when at least there is a fair chance of waking up under a virgin.’