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Leave working tipplers alone
By John Mortimer
October 20, 2007 06:00am
THE true sickness of our times is not that we eat too much, smoke cigarettes or knock off a bottle of wine in an evening.
It is the ever-growing tendency of medical boards, government officials, politicians and other groups who seem to have nothing better to do than tell us how to lead our lives.
It is as if we are a nation of miscreant mortals who have to be constantly lectured on how to behave.
We have now been told by the Liverpool's Centre for Public Health that the middle classes consume too much wine in their homes.
At dining tables in leafy towns and affluent suburbs, too many hard-working professionals are enjoying "hazardous" if not "harmful" amounts of alcohol night after night.
British Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo seized on these findings as another chance to boss us all about.
"Most of these are not young people. They are 'everyday' drinkers who have drunk too much for too long," she warns darkly.
"This has to stop."
It was in the summer that the Government first suggested it was planning to do something about middle-class drinkers who enjoy a bottle of wine at home in the evening. Now action seems even more likely.
What can we expect? An army of local council officials with breathalysers and clipboards knocking on our doors as soon as the sun passes the yardarm, and then returning to see if we are splashing too much cognac about after supper?
Perhaps they will kill two birds with one stone, and take advantage of us in our Falstaffian merriment to snoop round our houses.
They wouldn't approve of us smoking in our homes, either. Any of us who are caught might be banished from our own drawing rooms into the garden.
The absurdity of a government that allows thousands to become infected and die from superbugs in filthy hospitals, and then worries about how much wine we drink at supper in our homes, should be obvious.
Perhaps the situation needs clarifying. Yes, drinking is a possible danger to your health.
But then so is rock climbing, sailing, deep-sea diving, parachuting and motor racing. Are all these activities to be forbidden by law because they are possibly dangerous?
Drinking is legal and the Government must realise that you are entitled to pursue any activity that you enjoy, even if it is at some risk.
Nothing seems able to persuade our public officials of the true limits of government. Governments are there to regulate the economy, provide public services and make sure that the drains are working.
But we are run by a bunch of snivelling puritans in a government that has made a speciality of poking its nose into every corner of our lives and trampling all over our civil liberties.
In my view, many of them would benefit from a drink or two.
It is true that alcohol turns many of us into crashing bores. But a politician who enjoys his drink is likely to be far more fun and relaxed about life.
George Brown, Harold Wilson's permanently drunk foreign secretary, may have overdone it, but at least he left us with the story - almost certainly apocryphal - of the evening reception at which he approached a figure in a purple dress for a dance.
"There are three reasons why I will not dance with you," came the reply.
"One, you are very drunk. Two, they are playing my national anthem. And three, I am the Archbishop of Lima."
But it is not only alcohol that they want to stop us drinking at home. Fresh milk is also out.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs this week said we should be swapping revolting UHT milk for fresh pints - it would save on refrigeration and cut down on carbon emissions.
So when the officials come round as we are passing around the peanuts with our pre-dinner drinks, they will want to poke about in our fridge in the national interest.
What else they find will, of course, become the subject of vital inquiry.
Eggs, streaky bacon and sausages are serious causes of obesity, which might jeopardise our chances of being treated on the National Health Service.
Is there any reason why being fat should be regarded as some sort of sin? Shakespeare's Julius Caesar had, it seems to me, an extremely sensible view:
"Let me have men about me that are fat: Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o'nights; Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."
Winston Churchill, who brought us through the war, was fat. Fat Falstaff is one of Shakespeare's most memorable and likeable characters.
Food without wine is an unattractive prospect and few people in France or Italy would indulge in it. It is true that the 18th century habit of drinking seven or eight bottles of port after dinner could be thought excessive, but puritanism is not the answer.
This behaviour could be avoided if the young of today devoted themselves to the acquisition of some useful life skills, such as the best way to enjoy a bottle of fine wine and how to identify the precise point at which it is time to refuse another glass - a subject that should, I believe, be included in the high school syllabus, with the study of champagne reserved for A-level.
Learning to drink properly can be a painful, although necessary experience.
In my first term at Oxford, my friend Henry Winter and I managed to drink several bowls of sherry and then boil blue Bols and creme de menthe in an electric kettle and drink the horrible result.
Since then, no gin, lime, Bols, sherry or creme de menthe has passed my lips - champagne has overwhelmingly replaced them in my affections.
But now the Government would like to see off my pleasure altogether.
Well, I am too old to take any notice. This morning at 6am, I started as I always do with a glass of champagne.
I am writing this article with a glass of white wine by my side. And I hope to drink some more at dinner. I have only this to say to our rulers:
"Get on with your jobs and leave the rest of us to eat, drink and be merry."
- JOHN MORTIMER is the author, among other books, of the Rumpole of the Bailey series
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