Legendary Chesterfield pub landlord's 'Loony Juice' remembered on new T-shirt
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Fred Tipping, landlord of Brampton’s Three Horse Shoes pub in the 1980s, became famous for a concoction that was so strong it even caused his wife to endure sleepless nights.
Loony Juice – which is being remembered thanks to a new T-shirt designed by Chesterfield-born illustrator Carl Flint – was actually brewed in secret in the living room above the pub.
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Hide AdThe ‘highly potent’ strain of alcohol quickly built a huge following and was sold, illicitly, without the brewery which owned the pub ever finding out.
Fred’s daughter, Lyn, probably got as near to the precise Loony Juice recipe as we will ever get.
“My first memory of ‘Loony’ is when me and dad were sat in our living room above the pub one afternoon,” Lyn said.
“This particular afternoon he was talking to me about Loony. I’m not sure how long we had been selling it but I think it was relatively recently.
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Hide Ad"He told me that he’d tried various combinations and recipes before he finally produced something palatable that you could actually drink.
"He told me he’d sat in the living room shortly after trailing the latest experiment on himself. He said, ‘I’d had half a pint; I knew it was good when I began to see two tellies and could only switch one of them off’.
“It was a secret combination of various ciders and other spirits. It attracted customers from far and wide.”
Lyn said: “I tried it once and couldn’t drink the stuff. It was sickly sweet and syrupy. It was beyond me how anyone could have a pint of it.
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Hide Ad“Mum was very worried about customers getting so drunk on Loony and falling into oncoming traffic on the busy main road. Dad found a solution. He limited sales so men could only buy up to two pints and women couldn’t buy more than one.”
The Three Horse Shoes is now the Tap House. The Loony Juice legend is now set to be re-born thanks to the new T-shirt launched by Neil Anderson’s ‘Dirty Stop Outs’ company.
The T-shirt can be purchased here