They call me the ‘problem teetotaller’

My guts went on strike last July. I was staying in a hotel and I spent several days sprawled on the bed, vomiting occasionally, eating and drinking nothing and barely able even to wet my lips with water. Meanwhile, a bottle of Prosecco offered by the management stood untouched next to the widescreen TV. I started to wonder if this was my Frank Skinner moment. My farewell to booze.

In his memoirs, Skinner describes how he gave up drinking by accident in his twenties when a virus confined him to his bed for a week and destroyed his interest in alcohol. Restored to health, he went back to the pub to meet his friends but he shunned drink because he’d realised it was superfluous. As rehab stories go, Skinner’s is bizarre because it’s so quiet and unassuming. There’s no clash of cymbals. No Wagnerian power-chords. No rock-bottom moment of remorse and renewal.