I’m a cricket journalist from Sydney, and in 2019 I was in Manchester to cover the Ashes. After dinner, I stopped for a beer at the Malmaison hotel. I’m pretty fussy about beer and I love an English bitter. I asked the bartender if she had any ales. She offered me a European pilsner, though eventually got me a Deuchars IPA.
There were a few cricketers in the bar, so I was chatting to them while I distractedly tapped my card on the reader to pay for the beer. The bartender said it didn’t work and asked me to do it again and put my pin in. I did, then she asked if I wanted a receipt. I never get receipts. I’m a bit careless with money and not very attentive. I didn’t have my glasses on either.
At first I said no, but as she walked away I thought there was something odd about the interaction so I asked for the receipt. She printed it out and put her hand over her mouth. I asked what was wrong and she kept saying, “Oh no!” I got alarmed. She showed it to me, and the charge was for just over £55,000. I said: “Oh God, you’re going to fix this, aren’t you?”
Six months before, somebody had skimmed my card, and my bank had called to tell me that someone was trying to buy a six-pack of beer in the western suburbs of Sydney. It isn’t where I usually buy beer, so they didn’t put the charge through. That day, I thought: there’s no way a bank will put through a charge of £55,000 for a beer. I talked to the bar manager, who reassured me that it was their mistake and that I wouldn’t be left out of pocket.
The next morning, I got a call from my wife, asking me what I did the night before. She knows I love Manchester and thought I’d put down a deposit on a house in the city. She told me that about A$102,500 was missing from our bank account – it was nearly $100,000 for the beer and $2,500 in bank charges. I went back to the bar the next night to discuss it, and the person who made the mistake saw me and ran.
I think what happened was that while I was inputting my pin code, some figures had been added to the end of the price. It was the bar’s mistake, but I probably should have worn my glasses.
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At the time, I was the chief cricket correspondent for the Australian newspaper. I rang them and explained what had happened, thinking it might make an amusing story. They weren’t that interested, so I tweeted about it. I’ve never seen a reaction like it. I had calls from every newspaper in the UK, and every radio station and newspaper in Australia. A mate in Los Angeles called me because the story was on CNN. I’m an old-school journalist and had it drummed into me that “you are not the story”, so I found the attention a bit awkward.
There were a lot of raised eyebrows about how a humble journalist had that much money in a bank account, but it was an overdraft account attached to my mortgage. I paid the front half of my marital house for that beer.
Eventually, we got all the money back, but it took about two or three weeks and didn’t all come through in one go.
Now I host a podcast called Cricket et Al with fellow journalist Gideon Haigh. Last year, during the Ashes, we went back to that hotel to revisit the scene of the crime and record an episode from there. It was odd to go back. I ordered the same beer, but now I’m more wary about what I’m being charged.
This story will follow me around for the rest of my life. I can never mention the price of anything without someone saying, “At least it’s not a $100,000 beer.” All I wanted was a quiet nightcap.
In a way, I’m happy it happened. In life, you want to achieve one thing that sets you apart. I’ve written half a dozen books, I’ve been a cricket writer, I’ve raised children, and I’ve tried to be kind, but on my gravestone it will say: “Here lies the man who paid $100,000 for a beer.” It’s the most significant thing that’s happened in my life. It would probably be better to have been the guy who invented penicillin or the guy who wrote Ulysses, or even the guy who was a really good cricket writer, but no – I’m the world’s most-expensive-beer guy.
As told to Isabelle Aron
