The First Ever "Outstanding Achievements in Providing Free Booze" Awards

Food is not a priority this week. Instead, all nourishment will be gleaned from contemporary art and free beer: it's Glasgow International again!

This festival kicks off this weekend and runs until the end of April. You can read about the shows and events at the official website.

And since every gallery and loads of alternative venues will be hosting new shows, there are a lot of openings to attend. This translates into a lot of free beer to be consumed.

While I will be formulating loads of incisive, harsh and lazy opinions about the work on display, that's not what I'll be sharing with you. Instead I've devised a basic system for evaluating the quality of the alcoholic offerings at each of the openings. Each event will be marked, and the results will be posted as quickly as my hangover will allow me near a computer. My awards for Outstanding Achievements in Supplying Free Booze will be declared on Monday.

Events will receive a mark out of 10 for each of these criteria:

* Amount

* Quality

* Variety

* Correct Serving Temperature (i.e. is the beer cold? does the red wine feel a bit sweaty?)

* Availability of Correct Serving Vessel (i.e. did they run out of glasses for the wine?)

Special awards may be given for:

*Most obscene amounts of hooch

*Best sponsorship arrangement

*Prettiest people drinking free alcohol

*Horniest/Funnest party as a result of the free alcohol

Everything kicks off tomorrow night, so watch for the first post on Friday. Until then, pray for my liver.