I can’t give the advice the government would want me to give. That’s for sure because I, it’s a big part of my world is having a drink and using it to unwind. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. And I don’t like the growing pressure that is on people for it and the guilt. But I would say, Just know when you’ve hit your limit. But my biggest trouble when I was younger was that I would drink until I got ill and that has an adverse effect on everything. Education when you don’t go in, work when they have to send you home and that’s happened to me several times. And it’s, it’s not good and it doesn’t feel good and you say every time, the cliché that you won’t do it again but you do. And I would just say, just know your limit and try not to mix your drinks too heavily. And they say have a pint of water in between each drink. Apparently that’s a good idea but I’ve never tried it.

I was, it was never a big thing in my house that children shouldn’t drink. I mean, of course, I wasn’t given a bottle of vodka but you were always allowed a little stubby beer at Christmas or a glass of wine if you had been good on a special occasion like a wedding or my mum’s a massive football fan so if Chelsea were playing she would let me have a, [ha] a little, one of those little French, terrible French stubby beers.

I got into drinking when I was about 15/16. I think maybe even a bit younger. When by then I already thought I was grown up and an adult and I knew everything there was to know about the world. And I used to, because my mum was very strict about when I left the house so I used to do an amateur dramatics club once a week but I told her it was twice a week when I was 16. So that I could go to the pub with my friends. But we were always very sensible drinkers. We would do it socially and I didn’t binge too much back then.

Once you have more bills and someone to share your life with I think the urge to go out every day with your friends and get drunk just dissipates and you don’t have that any more.

And also as you mature I think genuinely it doesn’t seem as important to get drunk. You can enjoy yourself just as much having a few, if not more, because you can remember what happened. I remember being to the cinema once drunk and not remembering the film at all which is entirely pointless. But I go to theatre, have a couple of wines then it’s quite good.

I’ve also my judgement’s been off and I’ve got in cars more than once with people who have been drinking and not realised or not been aware or thought about it because it’s not me doing the driving. I’d not really thought about this other person who is taking me home who, has also been drinking. I’ve been horrified the next day to find out that they have but I’ve never thought to ask. I’ve also cycled into a cobweb and fallen off my bike because my judgement obviously wasn’t quite there and as I hit the cobweb I reacted and damaged all my arm, really hurt my arm. So the classic drunken antics that people get up to. And I have a weak ankle that sometimes likes to give way if I’ve had too much to drink [ha].

Were you sort of drinking within a group of people that you knew well or?

I’ve yeah, I’ve never gone out or gone away with people I don’t know. I have a friend who she often makes very bad decisions when she’s been drinking. And she doesn’t eat a lot either so she drinks, gets drunk very quickly and there are times when she has been attacked in the street when she’s been on her own. And that’s not just men, she was attacked once by two girls that had a vendetta of some kind against her. She’s been mugged several times because she goes around on her own in London. And will not listen to any advice but she just continues to put herself at risk. She, she’s lucky that nothing more serious has happened to her.

But I have an interesting point I’d like to say about wine that I feel is something I don’t think people realise. When I was younger at school they talked about. My education they talked about drugs really well and it was around the time that a couple of girls had died of Ecstasy in clubs so they were very, very hot on talking about that but no one really ever told us about alcohol.

I don’t know what it’s like now because I imagine people, the government has put in a lot more effort into alcohol nowadays. But when I was 15 alcohol is something I see my parents do all the time. I was allowed a glass of wine at a wedding. And I genuinely had no idea how alcoholic wine was because in my childlike understanding I was allowed wine at a wedding therefore it mustn’t be so bad. It was only when I started to get some pretty bad hangovers I realised how bad wine, how alcoholic wine is.