I’m no “expert”, but after a veritable glass expert did a big fuck-up at work and accidentally drank 180-year-old human piss, I’d feel much more comfortable calling myself one. I reckon the bar is probably the floor.
[jwplayer D5BFA7OO]
Andy McConnell, a glass specialist for Antiques Roadshow, was presented with an old bottle on a 2016 episode. He inserted a syringe into a bottle, withdrew a portion of the brown liquid, and gave it a good old taste.
“I think it’s port – port or red wine… or it’s full of rusty old nails and that’s rust,” he said.
In actual fact, it was piss. 180-year-old piss, to be precise, mixed in with human nails and a single strand of hair.
The big revelation came from host Fiona Bruce in the latest episode, who explained it was a “witch’s bottle” used as a talisman against curses.
“Inside were these brass pins, all of these dating from the late 1840s, and the liquid – urine, a tiny pit of alcohol and one human hair,” Bruce said.
“And a mysterious little creature called an ostracod, which is like a little cockle. So [this] was not a bottle of port or wine, but a witches bottle.
“So buried in the threshold of the house as a talisman against witchcraft, against curses, against misfortune coming into the home.”
At least McConnell appeared to take it in his stride.
“Yummy,” he said. “Such good news.”
