Welcome to Dr Drip – the man to clear all our heads

Nearly all of them are useless, but it always takes a few weeks for me to realise this or for someone to point out that it’s not financially viable, that I have none of the requisite skills or that someone has already invented it and it’s called Facebook.

Occasionally, however, I have a moment of inspiration that is genuinely a viable opportunity, usually subject to someone providing a sizeable cash donation. Such an occurrence happened during the Christmas break.

As with many successful start-ups, this gem of an idea was borne out of my own experiences. Namely, that I suffered far too many hangovers in the last few weeks.

I woke up one Saturday morning just before Christmas and remembered that I was due to play in a Trinity Shield football match that afternoon. I was in a bad state. The previous night had been a reunion between me and a group of lads who don’t get together that often, mainly because it takes us so long to recover but also because all we are ever left with following these nights out are fuzzy memories involving farmyard animals and traffic cones and it takes three weeks for someone to pluck up the courage to ask, ‘What happened to my shoes?’

But I’m proud to play for my home parish, Trinity, (who this year made it to the semi-finals for the first time in about 300 years, falling to a St Saviour side that included half of the Island team playing for them) and I was determined to make it out onto the pitch, regardless of how much actual use I would be once I got there.

So I crawled to the kitchen and concocted my ‘cure’. It includes blue Powerade (an American sports drink that contains apparently essential electrolytes), a pinch of salt and sugar, lemon juice (which allegedly helps stave off cramp when you are dehydrated), a teaspoon of instant coffee granules, (for caffeine, obviously), soluble aspirin and a pinch of chilli powder (I can’t even remember why that’s necessary, but it does seem to help.) The cure never really does much but the horrible taste gives my pounding head something to focus on other than the hangover, so it could be argued that it helps.

But as I was forcing down the last, grainy dregs of my blue magic juice, I received a text message that nearly made me cry with joy – St Martin had scratched (not able to rustle up enough players), which meant that we were through to the next round and I was free to return to bed.

It got me thinking, though. Was there a more scientific way of recovering after a heavy night out? After some painstaking and extensive research into the subject (Google). I discovered that there was. Apparently, medical students had developed a nifty way of ensuring they could attend classes hangover-free by hooking themselves up to IV drips, instantly replenishing their bodies with the salts, sugars, fluids and vitamins that they were so sorely lacking after downing four bottles of Lambrini the night before. The idea had caught on and apparently several private medical clinics in London were offering a similar service to its patients for a fee of between £150 and £200.

My business idea was this: a mobile hangover curing service (Dr Drip?) which brings everything to your door and in under an hour restores you as a functioning human being, all for the affordable price of £99.

Think about it – you could drink with impunity, throwing Jaeger bombs down your throat at 2 am but knowing that you’d be fine for the family lunch the next day because you’ll receive a helpful visit from friendly

Dr Drip!

I bumped into a friend’s sister, a nurse, at a party and sounded her out over whether she thought it was a good idea or not. At first I think she thought that I wanted to administer the IVs myself, and she quickly pointed out the various legal, medical and moral complications.

But when I pointed out that I hate needles (just the thought of sticking something sharp in another person’s vein makes me want to pass out) and that I would obviously want to employ friendly, qualified medical professionals such as herself, even she had to admit that it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

The only thing that I and everyone disagreed on was the price. One of my friends insisted that he would never pay more than £20 for such a service, but when I reminded him of how he felt on our last away trip to watch the football, when he woke up in the hotel almost in tears, he admitted that at the time he would have given me a blank cheque and his PIN number if hooking him up to a drip would have stopped the pain.

Personally, I think I’ve had better ideas over the years. I still think that I would run a totally adequate dog day-care centre or countryside nursery. (I even wondered if you could combine the two, seeing as the elements are essentially the same – you look after a helpless member of someone’s family, cleaning up their poo, feeding them and so on because they want to go to work and can’t bear leaving their dog/baby at home alone.)

And there’s still room for a huge go-kart track somewhere in Trinity, assuming I can convince the Constable to let dozens of noisy petrol-powered machines pollute the air for the best part of the day.

And my plan to create a seaweed factory, creating all kinds of things out of the nutrient-packed greenery that clutters up our shores, only now seems silly because the Environment Minister is also a public fan of such a wacky idea.

But Dr Drip is The Big One. That’s where the money is. People in Jersey drink about 17 times as much alcohol as any other country in Europe (or whatever the latest worrying statistics state), so all across the Island each Saturday and Sunday morning there is a veritable goldmine of people lying in bed, wishing they felt better, just waiting to throw money at the problem.

And if it doesn’t work out, it might at least help me conquer my fear of needles.