He would never have shown such deplorable manners had he been sober.

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 183.  

In the summer of 1955 Stavros Nearchos lent my mother a beautiful caique, which took us on a memorable cruise through the Aegean. With us were Paddy and Joan, and our friends from Paris days, Frank and Kitty Giles. We started in Piraeus, then dipped gently through the Cyclades and Sporades—visiting the grave of Rupert Brooke on Skiros—to the Dodecanese. On Santorini we called in at a taverna where a party of some kind was in progress—and, judging by the state of many of the guests, had been for some hours. This was the time when the Cyprus crisis was at its height, the Greeks calling vociferously for Enosis, or its union of the island with Greece. Suddenly one of the party guests, having heard us speaking English, struggled to his feet and launched into a passionate diatribe against the British, ending with a still more impassioned rendition of the Greek national anthem which was instantly taken up by his companions—but which, not altogether surprisingly, we failed to recognize.

Except Paddy. “Quick,” he said, “stand up!” We all rose hurriedly to our feet, and he joined lustily in the singing. To our accusers this was something of a setback; but worse was to come when they, as they thought, finished the anthem and sat down while Paddy, still standing to attention, started on the second verse, followed by the third. Of these verses he alone knew the words, and he eventually sat down to loud cheering. Several people came up to our table afterwards to apologize for their friend—who, they said, would never have shown such deplorable manners had he been sober.