“May I have this Dance?”

Ben Macintyre, of THE TIMES OF LONDON, once wrote that Winston Churchill began each day with a whisky and soda; he "slurped through the war on a tidal wave of Champagne and brandy."

Perhaps, he wrote, this was not a good example for the British foreign secretary [whom I will not name—just in case MacIntyre’s information is incorrect; you know the British Press. :) ]

In the 1960's, at a reception in Peru, he (the foreign minister) was said to have once stumblingly invited a guest in flowing purple robes to dance. But it was not to be.

"First, you are drunk," the guest is said to have replied. "Second, this is not a waltz; it is the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am not a woman; I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima."