At risk of sounding like Glenda Slagg, don’tcha just hate those mealy mouthed drink aware advertisements which are crawling all over the Tube? You know: “Party this weekend – it was a party, right?”. Because we all need to feel just that little bit worse right now.
What people seem to forget is that bingeing Britain is not a modern phenomenon. But until the temperance movement came along and encouraged everyone to die of cholera, no-one used to worry about it. Dr Johnson recalled that in his youth all the respectable people of Lichfield got drunk every night and no-one thought the worse of them for it. And at least when they went in for warnings, the eighteenth century did it in style, whatever Kingsley Amis said about gin being for pussies.
Admittedly, drink does promote all sorts of social evils, not least the chance of ending up looking like a guest on the Jeremy Kyle show.
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