A WELSH poet who stands — or sometimes falls — in a long and not always honourable tradition among his compatriots has been given £2,500 of lottery money to get drunk.

Karl Beer, 27, from Port Talbot, who writes poems about getting “blind drunk”, intends to write a book about his drinking experiences and the grant will go on “research”.

He said yesterday: “Some of the stuff is going to be quite shocking. My work is about going out and getting completely wrecked, but it is aimed at the 18 to 30 age group and I’m hoping to make people laugh.”

The line of drunken Welsh poets can be traced back to Goronwy Owen, whose drunken escapades and profligacy set a benchmark in the 18th century. Owen’s best known modern successor is, of course, Dylan Thomas who died of alcohol poisoning in November 1953. His reported last words were: “I have just had 18 double whiskys in a row. I do believe that’s a record.”

Mr Beer’s hand-out from the Millennium Commission caused some anger in his home town yesterday. The chairman of the Chamber of Trade, Gerald Harris, called it a “waste”, pointing out that a lottery grant for a sports pavilion had been cut by £87,000.

The Millennium Commission said: “Mr Beer’s project was to work with excluded groups in the community including young offenders and that is what we are funding him for.”

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