Called to the bar to drink in some key life lessons

DOES alcohol advertising affect young minds? A school friend had an operation and emerged from the anaesthetic singing: ‘I wish I was in Greenall Whitley land’ to the amusement of the entire recovery ward.

He was barely 16 and I doubt the English bitter was even available in our small corner of Wigtownshire – proof positive of the power of ad men’s jingles.

Now alcohol adverts could be banned before 11pm and drinks firms stopped from sponsoring music and sports events under a proposed crackdown.

When nearly a third of Scottish youngsters have tried alcohol by age 13 and two-thirds by 15, I agree there’s an issue. But are adverts just the easy target?

Our ‘difficult relationship with alcohol’ is an article of faith among the Left, who assume anyone who bends an elbow is a hopeless drunk. They itch to proscribe and nanny but they never learn that bans are counter-productive.

Prohibition in the United States overnight turned most of the population into criminals and transformed organised crime into a lethal powerhouse. The 1920 Volstead Act was well-intentioned – and an unmitigated disaster.

If we are serious about guiding our children on alcohol, hiding it away is not the answer.

We should not demonise responsible drinking either. Alex Salmond called us ‘A nation of drunks’ then launched his book ‘The Dream Is Dead But Shall Lumber On Like a zombie’ with enough pink champagne to float a battleship.

We should accept most of us, like Churchill, ‘take more from drink than it takes from us’ and help the relative few who have a genuine problem.

yes, we should also crack down on under-age drinkers and especially on belligerent late-night drunks who turn streets across the land into no-go battle zones.

Other countries manage the trick. A couple of years ago I emerged from a hotel in Reykjavik at 5am, heading for Keflavik airport.

The streets were full of young Icelanders weaving their unsteady way home, many spectacularly drunk and barely capable of speech. yet there was no threatening atmosphere; no taxi-rank flashpoints; no flailing fists. There were no police – and no need for them.

A confession: I supped in pubs long before I was 18. I played in several bands which gave me easy access to licensed premises.

you may recall the hit song Nineteen (Its chorus ran: ‘N-N-N-Nineteen’) by Paul Hardcastle. I had a T-shirt with ‘19’ picked out in red next to a Vietnam-era GI toting an assault rifle. It was handy as I was only S-S-S-seventeen as I bellied up to the bar.

This was Big Boys’ Rules and it taught me responsibility and moderation. Getting fou, sozzled, blootered, steamboats – funny how we Scots have more words for ‘drunk’ than the Inuit have for snow – was bad form.

Getting ‘fighting drunk’ would have attracted unwanted attention and getting barred from one pub in a small town will get you barred from them all.

So I choked down a modest couple of pints (I found the first ten years of drinking beer the toughest – plain sailing after that) and by 18 knew there’s a thin line between enough and one too many.

Meanwhile, classmates whose first illicit drinks were at house parties were paralytic and face down in a rosebush.

Today, too many of our youngsters ‘pre-load’, guzzling super-sweet drink, often on an empty stomach, before going out. The streets and A&E departments bear testimony to the predictable carnage. These are the people we need to target and educate.

And, sorry, but stopping a drinks firm putting its logo on a football team’s shirts won’t stop wee Jean or Jimmy rattling six alcopops into them as they get ready for a night on the town.