I'm putting this here rather than in the TEAM Forum just because there's a Mack-Daddy investiture involved and those traditionally go here--but a lot of this shout-out is for TEAM work very well done way beyond any reasonable call of duty. 

Mr. Andy Dudley ("ghman") is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as an antonymn to "sux," and his picture is next to the definition of "rocks." 

Andy has headed up the UK TEAM perfectly, saving me a lot of work and keeping a good bit of money in the hands of the Tift enterprise and out of the hands of the USPS, and has generally been a model of what to do and how to do it.  I owe him a whole lot and so does TM.

Andy came over for the Durham NC show from England in March and graced us with his presence in our home and on Interstate 40 up to Durham.  He sat patiently in the passenger seat of my car as I frantically drove around darkened Durham at 1:30 a.m. looking for contact lens solution so Andie and I could peel our lenses off and go to bed.  The fine little bottle of Scotch that Tift and the band were so grateful to find in their tour survival kit when they found themselves stuck in a dry county in Kentucky was from Andy.

And as of last night, Andy scored Mack-Daddy #18 in Bristol.  The photo evidence, included here, is most special; I honestly haven't ever seen Tift more obviously delighted to see somebody with a bottle of Maker's after a show.  And he deserves that. 

I would appreciate it if everyone who reads this would say something nice to Andy.  A few folks like him is what makes this whole damn thing work. 

HARUMPH!

Hooray for Andy! He DOES rock, indeed! We so enjoyed having him stay with us and go to the Durham show with us. We wanted to keep him (at least until the scotch ran out), but he said he needed to go home. And now I'm glad he's there, so he could take proper care of Tift!

Cheers, Mr. Andy! Job well done!

Andy is The Man.

If you've never heard that great English accent, check out his response to the March 22 Durham show, about 10 seconds into this video clip.

Andy for Prime Minister!!!  First foreign Mack Daddy? Congrats and thanks for working so hard .........JCK

Very well done!

Cheers everyone!

You sure know how to make me cringe with embarrassment Phillip - thanks a lot!

Its been a complete pleasure to help out with the UK side of things, but its not just me over here... its the UK TEAMers Colin in Edinburgh, Chas in London, and Clive in Kent who've all done and will be doing great things to help out T & the band, so those guys deserve a shout out too - they rule!

As for the destination of the MM bottle - you might have spotted in the post here that Tift loves the Chatham County Line boys so much that she asked if they could have the bottle as a gift from her (since coming over to the UK, Guinness has replaced MM as the TM tipple of choice!)  so we hatched a cunning plan to send Vicky with the MM bottle half-way across London on Sunday night to the Luminaire where CCL are playing - she will smuggle the bottle in to the venue, or maybe just lob it through their dressing room window - we haven't decided which will be best yet!

Here's Tift writing and defacing her own pic on the postcard she's sending the CCL guys with the jar of whisky!

Now that picture is truly a classic!

Maker's Mark successfully handed over to Dave from CCL last night.  Great gig by the band at the Luminaire in London.

V