Alcohol

Although drinking excessive levels of alcohol is up there with Olympic cycling and democracy as things the British excel at, the same cannot be said for dealing with the aftermath. Over the festive season we splash more than £2 billion on trips to the pub as punters take exhortations to have a merry Christmas a bit too literally. But our subsequent hangovers cost the economy almost £260 million through sick days and a lack of productivity. A night on the tiles tends to leave people feeling a little defenceless the next day. However, for those of us who have no option but to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning,

It’s chucking-out time at my local pub, and the high street is full of idiots. They’ve all had a lot to drink, but they’re in no hurry to go home. They’re looking for a party, somewhere loud and lairy to go on to. They’d settle for more booze, but some speed or skunk would be even better. It’s a scene I’ve seen a thousand times, but lately something’s changed: these tearaways aren’t teenagers — they’re in their fifties and sixties. Meet the Saga louts, those feckless folk who refuse to grow up even as they approach old age. Saga louts are a pain, and I should know because I’m one

To adapt Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous dictum on the failure of the Germans to tackle Hitler, ‘First they came for the smokers and I did not speak out because I was not a smoker…’ How right the smoking lobby was when it warned that once the health Nazis had banned smoking in enclosed public spaces they would target the rest of us. Red meat, cured meat, sugar – all are the subject of increasingly belligerent health campaigns. Today the Chief Medical Officer has upped the ante on alcohol.  No amount of alcohol intake is safe, she says. We risk cancer with every sip we take.   The recommended maximum for men

Even the name is pretentious. And something of a misnomer, too. After all, a canapé comes from the French word for ‘couch’ — the idea presumably being that a garnish of some kind or other sits on top of tiny slices of bread or small crackers in the same way that tasty people plonk themselves down on a sofa. Except that the whole business of dainty finger food — as liberated Victorians used to call it — has got so out of hand that wherever you fetch up, chefs are going to extremes to outdo each other. During the preamble to new year, I attended one bash at a swish

From Nigel Slater Q. With each passing year (I am nearly 60, for heaven’s sake), I am finding it increasingly difficult to lie convincingly. This is a particular problem when unwrapping presents. The grateful words flow from my lips like warm jam from a spoon but what appears on my face is ‘Seriously, how could you?’ Do you have any suggestions as to how I can make my facial expression match my words? I hate to appear ungrateful. A. This problem may be relieved with the easy expedient of alcohol. There is a reason people drink fizzy wines during the festive season — they produce a mild euphoria which masks

Is anything worse than the office Christmas party? It is almost always a horror show. Colleagues who are cheerful all year round turn into angry drunks. Usually benign bosses become second-rate pimps. The interesting become boring and the boring become interminable. The average office Christmas do tends to leave you wishing you didn’t have to come back to the grind next year. Why should it be so? Most of us like the people we work with— give or take — so a few hours of celebration should be fun. The problem, I think, is that office party organisers, who tend to be drawn from the management caste, can’t get themselves

Nothing better sums up the out-of-touchness of public-health prigs than the debate about so-called binge drinking. To these teetotal, ciggie-dodging suits, for whom fun is the foulest of f-words, and who are such miserabilists that they’re made sad by the idea of happy hour, anything more than four units of booze a day for a bloke, and three for a lady, counts as binging.Four units is two pints of weak lager. Three units is a large glass of wine. Are these people for real? That’s lunch for many of us. On party nights most of us have more than that before we even don our glad rags and leave the house. Consider

With alcohol consumption falling every year for over a decade it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the myth that Britain is in the grips of a drinking epidemic, but where there’s a will there’s a way. One method is to focus on whichever group is drinking the most. Even though everybody is drinking less, some people are bound to be drinking more than others and that means scary headlines. Inconveniently for the doom-mongerers, the people who are drinking the most happen to be the middle-aged and middle-class. It would be a better story if the heaviest drinkers were the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe

Down here in west Cornwall, the days are long and summer is on the wing. Like the Tories in Scotland, the tiny population of Cornish choughs continue to defy extinction, clinging on like crazy with their little red feet, simply refusing to die out. Six nests with chicks have been monitored this year, while the birds themselves enjoy a higher level of security and protection than a Russian mafioso. I am dying to see one, forever scanning the cliffs with my binoculars, trying and failing not to be a holiday cliché. Middle-aged woman in Breton top, bakes her own bread and stares at the sea for hours on end. Chough