Millions toast Arthur’s Day

CONNOISSEURS may claim Guinness doesn’t travel well, but there were more than a few pints of the black stuff pulled in hostelries across the world yesterday as purveyors raised a glass to Arthur.

Exactly 250 years after one of Ireland’s most iconic figures took a 9,000-year lease on St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin, it was Welshman Tom Jones who led the tributes to his legacy.

With his newly white and grey hair and attired in a velvet black suit, the crooner bore more than a passing resemblance to the world’s most famous stout which he was honouring as he admitted he started drinking Guinness shandy as a child at home with his father.