There's quite enough vanity about a website, without going too far into the derivation of my name, but (in a minor way) it is a mythical name like John Bull or Robin Hood. Sir Toby Belch (in Twelth Night) may well be this eternal hedonistic Falstaffian rogue.

At some point one of the library staff brought me a cutting from a Cardiff paper in the 30s, about the last Ale-Taster in Cardiff. I was very amused, but lost the cutting (and you can't 'search' paper archives the way you can electronic ones. So I tried the web, and came up with this:

"Cardiff Ale-Taster

I remember the last Aletaster of Cardiff. His name was Edward PHILPOT, and his nickname 'Toby Philpot.' I well remember hearing him say to someone with whom he was talking in the street : 'Well, I must go and see what sort of ale they have got at the Glove and Shears.'"

which I found here, in Reminiscences of Old Inhabitants.