The 12 heaviest drinkers in TV history

Now there have been bars and scenes in television history that have been ingrained in our minds for one reason or another, yet only a select few television shows have put a spotlight on a character that is a downright drunk. Sometimes we grow to love them and sometimes we end up hating them, but we can all agree that these drunks from popular television have given us more than a few entertaining moments throughout the years.

12 Peter Griffin – Family Guy
What hasn’t Pawtucket Ale brought Peter Griffin? Pawtucket Ale has brought Peter countless drunken escapades that include meeting Pawtucket Pat and his Chumba Wumbas and even a job at the factory making the beer he so dearly loves. We even found out that his real father was a town drunk in Ireland. Plus drinking made him a piano virtuoso, so who could blame Peter from cracking a few Patriots from time to time? With a motto like “If you buy it, hot women will have sex in your backyard,” I’m not sure why I’m not drinking it right now.

11 Bobby Brown – Being Bobby Brown
For those of you that have never seen Bobby Brown’s short-lived reality show do yourself a favor and rent the DVD ASAP. I know Bobby has had some substance abuse issues and I don’t mean to make light of them, but when this guy drinks he is off the chain hilarious. In the show, there doesn’t seem to be more than five minutes that go by without him cracking a beer. Dude just loves to drink and make jokes and dance. I’m telling you, Bobby Brown is drunken gold in this show. “Mr. Telephone Man,” another round for the table…

10 Norm Peterson – Cheers
In a bar where everybody knew your name, Norm was a customer that you could set your watch to. When Norm arrived, you knew that it was beer o’clock. He was Cheers’ best customer and was never really ashamed of that fact. The man loved his beer almost as much as he loved… well, the guy just really loved his beer. He didn’t just drink and live at Cheers — the man was Cheers. Even when you yourself go to a bar often enough, somebody will end up throwing out the ol’ “Norm!” joke. His character has transcended into your real life and that should tell you just how important a beer drinker the man was.

“Can I pour you a beer Mr. Peterson?”
“A little early isn’t it, Woody?”
“For a beer?”
“No, for stupid questions.”

9 Barney Gumble – The Simpsons
He’s the drunken loser we all love to laugh at. There’s only one episode where he’s not completely inebriated when he comes on screen and that’s the episode where he becomes an astronaut. Now I’m not saying if you quit the booze for a few days you can become an astronaut, but, yes, I am saying that if you quit drinking you can become an astronaut. A lot of us grew up with this drunk and he always threw out plenty of good times while huddled at Moe’s.

8 Otis Campbell – The Andy Griffith Show
He wasn’t just Mayberry’s preeminent drunk, I think he was also one of the only people to ever get arrested in the history of the show. He’d get so blasted every weekend that Andy ended up giving him the keys to the jail so he could lock himself in and sleep it off. Doesn’t seem like great police work, but more importantly, shouldn’t somebody have tried to get this guy some help? He drank all the time and worked in the glue factory all day long — so this guy probably got high on fumes during the day and high on booze at night. If that’s not a recipe for rehab then you’re living on Fantasy Island.

7 Everyone on Dean Martin’s Roasts
Man, these things were done back in televisions heyday, when you could get loaded on booze and they’d still put a camera on you. I mean just a room full of comedians chain smoking and downing highballs like they were going out of style. But what do you expect from a man that always seemed to have a drink in his hand while he was performing? Dean made a life out of the sauce, so why quit on something that works? Folks like Foster Brooks fit right in when these folks came to town.

6 Sue Ellen Ewing – Dallas
I’m too young to remember Dallas, but I think this clip pretty much sums up Mrs. Ewing’s penchant for the hard stuff.

5 The guys from Jackass
Now you’ll only catch these guys drinking on a camera a few times during the show, but it is more than obvious that they are drunk pretty much all of the time. In their film they even not-so-subtly allude to being sponsored by “the champagne of beers.” And I imagine they’d have to consume quite a few to pull the stunts that they filmed for their shows and movies. Come to think of it, I doubt we’ve ever seen an episode of Jackass where all these guys weren’t drunk off their ass.

4 Mad Men (and Women)
Mad Men is a show about drinking that happens to touch on advertising from time to time. Don Draper is quite frankly the “King of Scotch.” Apparently in the 60s, all you needed was a skinny tie, a pack on unfiltered smokes and a bottle of scotch to become an ad executive. With the success of this show, it’s hard to see how a company doesn’t come out with a line of Draper Scotch.

3 Patsy and Eddy – Absolutely Fabulous
There is drunk and then there is an inability to function without a martini in your hand 24 hours a day. Not only were these two never sober more than an hour a day, I’m pretty sure even Keith Richards would tell these broads to slow it down a bit. When you get so wasted that you fall into the hole dug for a casket at a funeral, you may want to re-think your drinking habits. Actually, that’s backwards. You’ve got it right, darling.

2 Graham Kerr – The Galloping Gourmet
This guy seemed to only enjoy one thing more than cooking, and that “thing” was drinking wine. He would cook with wine, serve his dishes with wine, make jokes about wine and he even drank wine while on the air. Sometimes he would even toss back a little too much vino and get a little tipsy while he was cooking. He was drunk, he was charming and was one heck of a good cook. Screw Rachael Ray, I’d want this guy cooking for my dinner party.

1 Bender – Futurama
A wise-ass robot and the only character on this list that actually runs off of alcohol, Bender always brings the party. This roboholic boozes like a machine because he is a machine; a machine born to drink… literally. Because if he stops drinking, he dies. Bender even brewed his own beer inside of his body one episode; he’s a self-sustaining booze machine. He can’t be destroyed! Run for the hills… and bring back whiskey or you can bite his shiny metal ass.

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