TERRY PRONE

Chairperson, The Communications Clinic

I gave up drink at 17. An older man, observing me take a flute of Champagne at an RTE reception — I was just about to present my first radio series — commented that I was planning to go into the two lines of business (showbusiness and journalism) which allowed you to be an alcoholic for free.

Thought about that. Put the glass back, still full. Copped on that because I have such an addictive personality, I shouldn’t drink at all.

The only problem with that was how not drinking revealed how mind-bendingly boring most of the social events I had to be at were. So I stopped socialising, too. Which got me out of smoke-filled pubs long before the smoking ban. Saved money. Giving up booze was a lifelong liberation in one easy move.

Like most teetotallers, I swamp food in alcohol. My Grand Marnier souffle is to die for. And you might die waiting for it because I’m too nervous to make it for others, too guilty to make it just for me, and the man in my life is contemptuous in roughly equal measure of souffles and Grand Marnier.

If I did drink, I’d never drink gin because gin drinkers age quickly and gin drinkers who smoke develop a powdered pumice-stone look like a battered prehistoric statue. I’d never drink stout because my uncle Dermot introduced me to it at Christmas when I was six and I’m still not fully over it, because I expected it to taste of chocolate with cream on top and it so didn’t. I might go for cider, because one of the women I most admire is a cider drinker.