BE HONEST. WHAT do you think of when you think of Harp?
Maybe your first thought is of those free pint glasses from the supermarkets that almost every household in Ireland had in their presses at one stage. Maybe you think of drinking cans in a wet field. Maybe you have some fond memories of pouring a glass of it out for Santy back in the 80s or 90s.
Maybe you think of sitting in a pub as a child, long before the smoking ban, developing a scratchy cough while you watch your parent or guardian horse jars of it back. It might be burned into your mind from the background of old photos of your parents in the pub before you were even born. If you live in Ulster, maybe you have some more recent memories relating to Harp – like dodgy college nights out.
One thing is certain though. Whatever you think of when you think of Harp, the last thing that crosses your mind is probably royalty.
As of February 2019, that may change, after Kate Middleton made international headlines posing beside a bar tap as she poured out a jar of the familiar gold beer during a visit to Ireland. Seriously, who’d have thought we’d ever see Harp on Vanity Fair and E!News.
Seeing Kate Middleton, or the Duchess of Cambridge as they call her these days, standing beside the beer that us regular peasants, our parents and grandparents drank since it was first released back in the 60s makes us wonder… Would she actually drink Harp? Has she ever actually drank it before?
We decided to take a look at Kate’s life thus far, to try and figure out how likely it is that she has ever consumed Harp of her own accord.
For every piece of evidence we find on her Wikipedia page, we’ll either add or deduct some points. The max score is 100, and the lowest score possible is -100. A score of 100 means it’s extremely likely that Kate Middleton drank Harp, while -100 means it is extremely unlikely that she ever drank Harp.
Firstly, let’s add a few for the face she makes while she’s pouring the pint. Yeah, pouring a pint is good craic, but she genuinely looks like she’s gasping for a sup of that. Somehow, looking at that photo, we can hear her shouting “WAHEY!” We’ve all smiled at a pint like this at some stage or another. We’ll give her 10 points for that.
Also another important point – we’re obviously only going to measure this up until the time when she began dating Prince William, because let’s be real, there’s no way she went near Harp (or any other pint, for that matter) once she had secured the bag.
Now let’s look at some of the facts.
- Kate Middleton was born in 1982. (+5 points for being of drinking age when Harp was still on tap in pubs)
- But her dad was rich. (-100, she probably had the resources to drink something fancier)
- On her mam’s side, the family were poorer. Her mam was an air hostess and her grandad was a coal miner. (+50 points, because they probably hated Thatcher with a miner in the family)
- Kate went to a ridiculously expensive private school (-50, and we also take back that comment about Thatcher)
- But then she went to college in Scotland (+40, have you seen the way Scottish people drink?)
- She did a degree in Art History (+20, I did Arts and I encountered a LOT of privately schooled people who could afford nicer cans than the ones they actually drank. Rich people love pretending to be as poor as everybody else for a few years in college)
- And she got a 2.1 (+20, if Kate Middleton didn’t get a 1.1 after all of that private education, then we can assume she was on the jars often enough in college)
Total score? -5
Conclusion? It’s pretty unlikely.
Well, thanks for following us on that journey. Maybe the next time a member of the royal family pays a visit to Ireland, we can trick them into being photographed with a can of Dutch Gold.
