Of course, I didn’t know Michael personally at the time, but the beer writing game being a relatively small and friendly one, he has in the years since become someone I call friend. Thus it was with no small amount of concern that I saw him in Denver earlier this year, very apparently suffering from some form of neuro-muscular disorder.
Although Michael was reluctant to discuss specifics at the time, the exact nature of his condition has been revealed this month in a letter to the members of his Rare Beer Club, which in turn was made subject of an affectionate post by my friend Jay Brooks on his blog.
In brief, Michael is suffering from that same condition that became such a hot-button election issue in the United States earlier this year, Parkinson’s Disease. As the letter, penned by Rare Beer Club President, Robert Imeson, states:
I have been asked to write to you by Michael Jackson — who is currently traveling and researching on behalf of the Rare Beer Club.
Michael is notorious among his friends for his passionate commitment to his work, and for the fearsome schedule he sets himself. What he has kept from us is the fact that he has been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for at least a decade and perhaps twice as long.
During that time he has written several thousand tasting notes and several hundred articles and has also presented scores of tutored tastings, speeches and book-signings around the world. Further, Michael has produced new books such as Ultimate Beer, The Great Beer Guide, Scotland and its Whiskies, and Whisky — The Definitive World Guide which, incidentally, was named best drinks book of 2006 in the James Beard Award and also the recipient of three other international honors. He has this fall compiled an anthology of his writing for Slow Food and completed a further revision of the fifth edition of The Great Beers of Belgium; his Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch is also in its fifth edition.
Michael has great praise for the work of the medical profession in the development of treatments to combat Parkinson’s. He has recently been prescribed some new medication, and the calibration of doses has caused some problems, which are gradually being ironed out.
He tells us: “When everything is in place, I can run almost as well as I did when I played Rugby League. The problems arise when I become absorbed in writing, or in a conversation, and forget my medication. Even the slightest delay can make me very unsteady on my feet — unable to walk at times — and slurred in my speech. Understandably, people think I am drunk, especially given my profession. I am not. My wild days were long ago. My writing has always fostered the notion of tasting more and drinking less, and I am true to that philosophy. The Gods have a sense of irony in making me look drunk when at my intake of alcohol is at its most modest.”
As is obvious in his comments, Michael’s famous sense of humour is still very much intact and his enthusiasm for the next stages of his life high. There’s plenty of life yet left in the Beer Hunter!
Still, the holidays being the reflective time they are, it is, I think, worth spending a few moments to bear him in your thoughts, and perhaps fire off a message of goodwill to the man through his website. Remembering that, were it not for this extraordinary individual, we might all be still drinking from a severely reduced selection of ales and lagers of interest.
To learn more about Parkinson’s, please visit their website.
