Cast your minds back, if you can, to 1986. A different era. The nation rejoiced as a jolly redhead married the Queen’s favourite son. Britain had a cast-iron prime minister who looked set to go on and on, with nary a dent to her patent leather handbag. A first-class stamp cost 17 pence; the average family home only a little more. There was a Big Bang in the City and a larger one at Chernobyl. And, in the nascent ready-made drinks market, something similarly seismic happened: Marks & Spencer launched the bevvy that spawned a thousand imitators, the ‘gin in a tin’.

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This epoch-defining moment passed me by at the time (I still had a few years left at primary school). When I was a 90s teen, it was alcopops that commanded the headlines and moral panic. It therefore wasn’t until about a decade ago – when I began hosting children’s birthday parties in my local park – that gins in tins came into their own. I soon learnt that the horror of hosting a dozen small people, radicalised by Haribo and gentle parenting, could be mitigated by chilling a crate of tinnies under a bag of supermarket ice and handing them round.

Me and my mum friends would clank cans then disappear behind a tree for a crafty fag while the entertainer (cheap because they were ‘awaiting a DBS check’) cracked on. Gordon’s gins in tins might have been higher profile, but for pure ABV (alcohol by volume), the pros knew that M&S was where it was at. I refer you to this advice on a Mumsnet thread: ‘Gordon’s – sweet FA. M&S – party time [two shots].’ It is for this that so many mothers will forever be offering it up to St Michael.

For anyone under 50, 1980s drinking culture is about as alien as a royal family that immediately commands respect. There were wine bars – heavy on the Sade, sawdust-strewn floors and bad chardonnay. Basically a Sophie’s Choice between gargling with butter or tropical Um Bongo. As for pubs, as late as 1982, women could be refused service on their own. Drinking in parks or on the go was the preserve of tramps and the long-term unemployed (who were plentiful in this era). As Adrian Mole’s ode to Mrs Thatcher ran: ‘Do you wake with “three million” on your brain?/ Are you sorry that they’ll never work again?’

But thanks to the ‘RTD’ (ready-to-drink) cocktail revolution, that’s all been transformed. Now, public drinkers will boast of ‘Doing a Diane Abbott’ – referencing the then Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington who was spotted drinking an M&S tinnie on a London Overground train in 2019 and forced to apologise. (Boozing on the Transport for London network is illegal.) Pub quiz regulars might like to note that the can in question was an M&S mojito rather than a gin and tonic. 

I soon learnt that the horror of hosting a dozen small people, radicalised by Haribo and gentle parenting, could be mitigated by chilling a crate of tinnies under a bag of supermarket ice

I soon learnt that the horror of hosting a dozen small people, radicalised by Haribo and gentle parenting, could be mitigated by chilling a crate of tinnies under a bag of supermarket ice

M&S gins in tins saw a spike in sales that same year after Andrew Scott, playing the ‘hot priest’ in Fleabag, offered Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character a ‘proper drink’ from his stash in the sacristy. ‘I’ve got cans of G&T. From M&S,’ he says with a twinkle, sparking their illicit affair.

Since lockdown, ‘RTDs’ have been the fastest-growing area of the British drinks industry, growing by 20 per cent in the past two years alone. This, despite party-pooping Gen-Z’s best efforts to scupper the one thing we do really, really well as a nation – getting trolleyed – with their kombucha and matcha. No wonder the birth rate is down.

Now, to mark the 40th anniversary of the drink that started it all, M&S is celebrating its ‘iconic cocktail cans’ with a limited-edition G&T ‘in packaging inspired by the original archive design’. Sadly, these hadn’t made it out to the farthest reaches of East Anglia when I pulled into my local M&S BP garage after the school run on Friday. But, actually, the limited edition looks far less palatable than the current incarnation. It’s black with gold lettering, rather than green. Apart from the welcome return of the St Michael branding (phased out by M&S in 2000), this looks more like the premium-strength cider favoured by vagrants than something you’d happily whip out for a swift one on the go.

But, given changing consumer trends, even M&S recognise that the 40th anniversary of its gin in a tin will be eclipsed by the spirit expected to be the summer tipple of choice: tequila. The retailer’s summer trends report last week declared: ‘Tequila is having a major glow-up, with sales soaring 50 per cent year on year and margarita sales jumping a huge 75 per cent.’ The store is launching a canned tequila and tonic to cash in on its popularity.

It is, says M&S, a ‘lighter alternative’ to a gin in a tin – and an awful lot lighter than the lurid plastic Buzzballz, which come in a lime and strawberry margarita flavour. (You may have seen the bright, round containers being swigged by teenagers ‘doing a Diane Abbott’ on London transport.) It’s a sight that always reminds me of the line in Withnail and I: ‘Not even the wankers on the building site would drink that.’

But, for intoxicating, cultural appeal, nothing will ever beat M&S’s gin in a tin. So on this auspicious 40th anniversary I shall be raising one of the classic green cans to the blessed St Michael. Cin cin. And Salve gins in tins.

© The Spectator