Don't get me wrong, I love a drink, too. I just don't get plastered as, like Nancy Astor, I want to know when I'm having a good time. It's not only the massive amount of alcohol consumed in the UK that should concern us. It's how most of us drink. We drink quickly and seriously.
People go out saying they want to get pissed, rat-arsed, paralytic.
They drink to forget, to lose their inhibitions, to generate aggressiveness. Don't kid yourself that the Oldham riots were fuelled less by alcohol than racial tension. A children's charity recently set up a freephone number for schoolkids with a drink problem, but were so overwhelmed by the volume of responses that they ended up taking down their own posters - they couldn't cope with all the calls. The organisers say society has no idea of the scale of children turning to booze. Like the Victorians, we still love our pubs Bacchus worship Such a depressing story reminded me of a piece by art critic Richard Dorment in The Daily Telegraph this week.