The headline “A glass of wine does the same damage as downing three shots of vodka” must have triggered many a panic-stricken shudder in adults across the land.

Duncan Selbie, the head of Public Health England, said that deaths from liver disease of working age people have increased by 500% since the 1970s because many arrive home, “pour a glass and have no idea how much they are drinking.”

Mr Selbie, who presumably timed his comments for maximum impact ahead of the festive season, said liver disease is now the third biggest killer of working age adults.

And just in case you were hoping there might be a bit of ambiguity in there to moderate the message he added: “And it is a silent killer with 75% of people with cirrhosis only being diagnosed once they are admitted to hospital.”

So, that’s Christmas finished with before it’s started. No cosy couple of hours in the local hostelry laughing and joking with your chums before heading home for a champagne toast ahead of uncorking a few bottles of velvety red and a complementary crisp, aromatic white.

Even for those drinkers like me who generally prefer draught beer to wine it was not the kind of shock to be easily brushed off.

And there was even worse news to come. The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday that: “Last week the Lancet commission recommended that liver scans should be offered by GPs as it said middle-class drinking is turning Britain into the capital of Europe for alcohol-related disease.

“Senior doctors have said too many people were treating alcohol dependence as “a lifestyle choice, like Armani jeans” and that Britain is now the only country apart from Finland in Western Europe in which prevalence of liver disease is increasing.”

Golly. If that doesn’t put a dampener on your festive preparations nothing will. Intriguingly, I could find no mention of the story in that day’s Times but there was, to my amusement, a huge full page ad on a right hand page tempting readers to take out a subscription with, yes, six free bottles of wine!

That’s the trouble with all these scare stories. I can picture one or two of my friends cavalierly pushing it all to one side and shouting to the barmaid: “Yes, another large red, Marjorie, and one for my pal ...”

Drink is so deeply embedded in our booze-soaked culture – any kind of sporting celebration, indeed any kind of celebration – that short of racking up the price of alcohol to Scandinavian levels there is precious little to be done about it.

Years ago I watched a friend of mine, a 48-year-old lawyer called Brian, die from alcoholism and it was not a pretty sight.

He was an engaging chap whose catchphrase in the Plummet Line pub, Halifax, was: “Another flier? Robert, another flier?” By which he meant yet another double G&T. Little did I know that he topped himself up with more wine and spirits when he got home.

When I went to his funeral I had to apologise to his friends for inadvertently helping him on his way.

And a female alcoholic enlivened one Christmas dinner by abruptly going face down in the soup. Later I discovered she had drunk one of my presents – a large collection of European beers. Grrr.

In 2012 everyone was advised by MPs to take at least two alcohol-free days a week.

That seems a reasonable request until you remember for many people the adage that ‘a day without wine is like a day without sunshine’ is all too true.

Brave atheists

America is such a scarily religious country I was almost slack-jawed to see the advertising campaign by the American Atheists group.

Huge advertising hoardings in the Tennessee cities of Memphis, Nashville, St Louis and Fort Smith, Arkansas, depict a young girl writing her letter to Father Christmas: “Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is to skip church! I’m too old for fairy tales.”

The late satirical writer Auberon Waugh used to joke that the Scots bought at least three Bibles every day but our American friends are even worse. Evolution is still a dirty word over there.

Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell famously told a journalist: “We don’t do God.”

A US presidential candidate who said he/she didn’t believe in God would be finished before they had even started.

Farewell Mr Brown

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown
 

Watching a horribly stiff Gordon Brown make his brief speech for the cameras outside 10 Downing Street before he became Prime Minister I thought of a comment by an unnamed adviser who said: “I actually think he’ll go mad. He’ll be the first prime minister to be carried out of No 10 by the men in white coats.”

Fortunately, it didn’t quite come to that but there was more than a grain of truth in the assessment.

While Tony Blair had a gift for absorbing the most wounding criticism before diffusing it by kicking a football about with his kids, Brown brooded.

Now he is to step down as an MP, Westminster watchers are kinder to him. His “psychological flaws” a thing of the past.

Alastair Campbell said he was not suited to the modern age and its 24-hour scrutiny. He came to power a whole century too late.