"The trouble with this world is that everybody in it is three drinks behind," said American actor and cocktail lover Humphrey Bogart. The enjoyment of spirits, wine and beer is celebrated in the arts, literature and popular culture. Many well-known public figures have been equally well-known for their love of having a drink -- or more -- in their careers. Not everyone likes to imbibe, as Knute Rockne, American football coach, said, "Drink the first, sip the second, and skip the third."

This is a list of famous people, for whom drinking is clearly a recognised part of their public or private image, and/or who act in a peculiar way about themselves drinking.

• John Barrymore - American actor. A biographer of Barrymore estimated that ". . . in 40 years he consumed 640 barrels of hard liquor." ^*

• Robert Benchley - American humorist, wrote for both The New Yorker and Life magazines. He also has a table named for himself at the 21 Club in New York City. Benchley is credited with saying, "Why don't we slip out of those wet clothes and into a dry Martini?" ^*

• Jeffrey Bernard - English journalist, whose near permanent habitation of the Coach and Horses became the stuff of legend. ^*

• George Best - Northern Irish footballer whose high-profile drinking and womanising made him arguably the first celebrity footballer. He is generally regarded as having failed to fulfill his potential as a sportsman due to his alcoholism. The contradictions of his life are summed up in the oft-quoted anecdote about the bellboy who entered his hotel room with breakfast in the early 1970s. Seeing Best in bed with Mary Stavin, the current Miss World, a magnum of Champagne and several thousand pounds of cash won from a night's gambling, the youth exclaimed, "George, where did it all go wrong?" ^*

• Charles Bukowski - An author and poet from Andernach, Germany whose writing and life revolved heavily around drinking. Many of his books' and poems' central theme is drinking or being drunk. He was a very prolific writer who details his life as a barfly or a lonely alcoholic author through his recurring character Henry Chinaski who is in essence Charles Bukowski.

• Anthony Burgess - English novelist and critic is held in awe by many for the prolificness of both his writing and his drinking. He invented his own cocktail, "Hangman's Blood", which is prepared as follows: "Into a pint glass, doubles 50ml measures of the following are poured: gin, whisky, rum, port and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added and the whole topped up with Champagne... It tastes very smooth, induces a somewhat metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover." ^*

• Richard Burton - Welsh actor, whose stormy marriages to Elizabeth Taylor saw the consumption of much alcohol. It was Burton's precarious state in a hangover during the filming of Cleopatra that Taylor claimed made her fall in love with him. ^*

• Winston Churchill - English politician whose relationship with alcohol nursed him through the tremors of World War II. Always quotable, one of Churchill's personal mantras included, "My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them." He famously replied to Lady Astor's comment 'Sir, you're drunk!' with "Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly." Pol Roger champagne famously made pint bottles solely for Churchill's consumption. After a lifetime of drinking, he concluded that he had "taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

• W.C. Fields - American actor made a career out of playing the lovable sop. He took his act from vaudeville to motion pictures. He said, "I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake... which I also keep handy." His co-star Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." ^*

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - American author loved the bottle, but during one of his drying-out periods, he had a conversation with his friend, humorist Robert Benchley: "Listen, Bob," Fitzgerald said. "Don't you know drinking is slow death?" Whereupon Benchley took a sip, smiled, and said, "So who's in a hurry?" ^*

• Benjamin Franklin - American statesman and intellect, who, in a 1773 letter wished for an ideal form of Cryonics caused by 'having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence', and instead he 'should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!'. ^*

• Judy Garland - American actress, whom for the premier of her 1954 film A Star Is Born reportedly asked her dress designer to make a muff big enough to conceal a bottle of Vodka. ^*

• Ernest Hemingway - American writer, who had this to say of Paris in the 1920s: "Sometimes I wish I’d went through those good times stone cold sober so I could remember everything, but then again, if I had been sober the times probably wouldn’t have been worth remembering." ^*

• Malcolm Lowry - novelist and poet, author of Under the Volcano. In an appraisal of Lowry's masterpiece Under the Volcano, British novelist Martin Amis comments that 'To make a real success of being an alcoholic you need to be...shifty, unfastidious, solopsistic, insecure and indefatigable. Lowry was additionally equipped with an extra-small penis, which really seemed to help'.

• Dean Martin - American singer, the most notable drinker in the hard living Rat Pack. ^*

• Dorothy Parker - American writer, poet and journalist, leader of the legendary Algonquin Round Table. It was Parker's fate that prohibition in the United States coincided with the Jazz Age, and she famously asserted that, "I like to have a Martini/ Two at the very most/ After three I'm under the table/ After four I'm under my host".

• Edgar Allan Poe - American author, of whom a college classmate wrote: "Poe's passion for strong drink was as marked and as peculiar as that for cards . . . without a sip or a smack of the mouth he would seize a full glass and send it home at a single gulp." Always a lover of his noble America, he died after a heavy drinking bout, whilst stuffing ballot boxes during an election in Baltimore, at the ripe age of 40. ^*

• Oliver Reed - English actor whose alcoholic binges were highly noted. Famous stories include arriving at Galway airport and passing out drunk on the luggage conveyor belt, and an arm wrestling competition in Guernsey saw him down 104 pints of beer in a two-day session. He died in a bar in Valletta, Malta whilst on a break from filming Gladiator, after reportedly downing '12 double rums, eight pints of the local lager, and half a bottle of Scotch' and defeating five sailors at arm wrestling. ^*

• Dylan Thomas - Welsh poet, who on the day of his death in New York City commented to a friend, "I've had 18 straight whiskies. I think that's the record". ^*

Lists of people | Alcohol-related lists