A nightcap nip is what you need to live to a ripe and fulfilled old age

If Famous Grouse, the whisky manufacturers, have their wits about them, they’ll be sending an entire crate of the good stuff to Grace Jones, who is now, at 112, Britain’s oldest woman. For Mrs Jones has attributed her longevity to a drop of their whisky every night: “Whisky is very good for you”, she observes. “I never miss my nightcap.”

So far so normal for people who break records for longevity. Gladys Hooper, who died a couple of years ago at 113, when she was the oldest Brit, put her long life down to a glass of sherry a day and good food.

As for Jeanne Calment, who died in France at the age of 122 (long after the man who had bought a reverse mortgage to inherit her property after her death), she didn’t even claim to eat well. She said she lived so long because of her dependence on chocolate, olive oil, cigarettes and cheap red wine – though she was also partial to port. Maybe the wine cancelled out the fags – who knows?

I told this to a friend who draws up care plans for old people on behalf of the NHS – he interviews nonagenarians all the time. “Absolutely typical”, he said. “The ones who age well have a controlled drinking habit. You often get them saying that they’ll have a glass of sherry or whisky at night. They don’t go crazy; it’s something that generation does.”

We’re back to the happy truism that a little of what you fancy does you good; always supposing that what you fancy includes a drink. But I think it goes beyond the health benefits of the whisky, port or sherry. It’s the notion of contained self-indulgence, of having a treat within limits. The ability to have the odd glass without drinking the entire bottle suggests a twin capacity for enjoyment and self-discipline which has a lot to be said for it generally.

Aristotle, that very sensible philosopher, would have been all for it – moderation in all things was his approach.

It’s probably the sanest attitude generally. I have lost track of what exactly the latest research on alcohol consumption is saying. There was a dispiriting study in The Lancet last month showing that a drink a day for a year increases the risk of developing one of 23 alcohol-related health problems. You only have to wait a few days to find another study saying the opposite, however. The most recent batch of research showed that moderate drinking is meant to be better than no drink at all (whereas aspirin consumption, which has no pleasurable element, has now been debunked as a life-extender for most people).

But what none of the research seems to factor in is that a drink is enjoyable: it cheers as well as inebriates. My grandmother would drink whisky – what she’d call “the creature” – daily in her tea, disguised in a ginger ale bottle. It did nothing to prolong her life, admittedly, but it cheered her up enormously.

Another thing about drink is that moderate consumption often goes with sociability. In his research on communities where people live longest, the writer Dan Buettner concluded that their centenarians had a number of factors in common, and one was that they drank a glass or two of red wine daily, often with meals and often with friends. Go figure.

The moral of the story of the excellent Mrs Jones is that it’s never too late to take up a nightcap; she started when she was a mere 50 years old. We salute her, possibly with the same beverage.