Airports will be harder to bear without that 6am gin

How early is too early to get drunk? The Government – nudged by the unlikely coalition of the Institute of Alcohol Studies and Ryanair, whose customers presumably get the drunkest on aeroplanes – are considering imposing licensing laws at airports. If they do, the very peculiar thrill of sipping a gin and tonic while munching on a giant Toblerone in front of an over-priced make-up concession will be over.

While I suppose this is a good idea – if you are a joyless prig – because it may prevent paralytic tourists trying to open the plane doors at 30,000ft, I will mourn the passing of the 6am gin at Luton (recently and inexplicably voted the best airport in London). And I don’t even drink alcohol, for fear I will try to open a plane door.

Airports are weird places: vast barns at the edge of cities containing a transient and anxious population, fiercely policed, with a shopping mall full of junk attached. Who, in these circumstances, wouldn’t want – I mean need – a drink or two? There is also the theory that any calories consumed in the air, and money spent, don’t count and are cancelled out “by science”, and this must be honoured.

Ryanair will probably moan that its staff are inconvenienced by inebriated passengers but having experienced Ryanair’s “customer service”, I’d ask the Government, on principle, not to do anything to make its life easier. Also, watching people go through the stages of intoxication – happy, horny, shouty, weepy, unconscious – is, to a former drunk, most diverting. It is like telly, and there is no telly at the airport.