alcohol

Rocketman, a biopic of Elton John starring Taron Egerton, offers a compelling account of the veteran piano prima-donna’s life story, successfully interweaving his journey into and out of alcohol and other drug issues.

His alcohol and cocaine use quietly tiptoes up behind him, the viewer’s mind screaming louder and louder, “He’s behind you,” in the powerless agony of a child who spies a baddie at a Christmas pantomime.

While this silent threat looms ever larger, scene by scene, the story tirelessly flips between the flamboyant and introspective, the comical and tragic, the loud and the quiet, and the serious and the absurd.

The emotional load of this makes the musical interludes a much-needed emotional release. These numbers grow organically out of the story-line and are beautifully choreographed and energetically performed.

Perhaps the most touching of these numbers is the chillingly alienated underwater rendition of the song Rocketman of the title. It conveys poignantly the loneliness and disconnection of alcohol and drug problems.

Whether or not you are an Elton John fan there is much to be learned and enjoyed in this telling of his life story, in which alcohol, drugs and then 25 years without them are critical elements.

Egerton goes through more costumes in two hours than many of us in a lifetime. But, more impressively, he manages to admirably capture a combination of defiance and acceptance that allows many to start again. ■

The UK government kept quiet for 22 months about the “grace period” it gave alcohol suppliers to omit the official safety guidelines, Alcohol Companion has discovered.

The department agreed the alcohol industry could omit the information from labels until September 1st this year in March 2017, only formally telling the public of the deal in January this year.

The deal was struck under Jeremy Hunt (left), who was thwarted in a bid to become prime minister this week. Hunt handed over the health department reigns to fellow would-be leader Matt Hancock (right) last summer.  

The silence meant even the most informed onlookers were taken-aback when Alcohol Companion revealed the alcohol industry had suddenly dropped the guidelines from its voluntary code in October 2017.

The grace period first became a matter of public record in January thanks to a speech to parliament by Steven Brine (below), who started as a junior minister three months after the little-known pact.

The health department says an eagle-eyed observer might have inferred the industry had been offered the delay in labelling from a Food Standards Agency update issued in September 2017.

It also says it issued guidance on how to communicate the low-risk guidelines at the same time as it quietly agreed the alcohol industry could have 30 months more omitting them.

“We are starting to see more products with labels that reflect the new guidelines and the department will continue to work with industry to implement the guidance,” the department said.

Only around 14% of alcoholic drinks labels tell consumers of the 14 UK unit (140ml) a week guideline, according to a BBC Panorama investigation into the issue last month.

The guideline was first introduced in January 2016. As few as one-in-six UK consumers know it. ■

One book on alcohol is enough, surely? Well, not quite, which is the reason I recently put out Alcohol for Nerds, a slim compilation of self-contained pieces on alcohol. Here’s why.

The alcohol science presented in Alcohol Companion produced many useful answers, at least for me. But it also raised many difficult questions.“Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?” as Adam Ant neatly put it in 1982.

With Ant’s queries still echoing my mind after my first book I felt I should at least try to offer a few solid answers. There is the recreational vacuum Ant notes, but also the ingrained beliefs and ideas to re-mould.

The science makes it abundantly clear, for instance, that drinking alcohol to deal with tension, low mood, shyness or to gain inspiration is liable to backfire. But then, what do we do? In Alcohol for Nerds, I explore some alternatives, like learning improv, soothing my woes by plunging myself in icy water and taking imaginative flights of fancy through psychogeography.

It is also clear that the sense of freedom we get from alcohol has the fundamental flaw of coming with a disabled brain. But what is the alternative? There are performance skills, as I found. And we can also broaden our ideas of freedom. Freedom is not just about lowering barriers to commerce, it is also about self-realisation and an absence of dependence.

The science I explore in Alcohol Companion has universal implications, but the way we deal with these implications does not need to be universal. Alcohol for Nerds is the product of me, a nerd, wrangling with the issues it raises for the last four years. I hope the results are of some help.

There are many other perspectives on this which each chime with different people. They have one thing in common: there can be few more concrete ways to improve our mental and physical health, and our personal finances than to come to terms with consistent low-risk drinking.

With a pandemic running riot, this is, perhaps, a uniquely good time to give it a try. ■

The UK public overwhelmingly supports experts’ calls for consumers to be given nutritional information, alcohol content and the official low-risk guidelines on alcoholic drinks.

“Why should alcohol continue to be exempt?” asks Sir Ian Gilmore, head of the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA), pointing out that all other forms of food and drink must offer consumers such basic information.

Three-quarters of Brits want to be told the number of units in a product, something they currently have to work out, says a Yougov survey for the AHA. Two-thirds want calorie information and half sugar levels.

Three-quarters of people also want to be told the official low-risk guidelines of 14 units (140ml) a week, according to a regional survey by AHA member Balance North East.

The alcohol industry’s marketing body Portman Group abruptly dropped the UK’s official low risk guidelines from its labelling standards in 2017. Its promises to return them to all labels have not been fulfilled

The public also said being told the official low-risk guidelines was essential if unit information is given in a Royal Society for Public Health survey in 2018. And 86% said they used labels.

The new survey forms the backbone of a letter co-signed by 94 health experts calling for better alcohol labelling. Its intended recipient is Health Secretary Matt Hancock who took over the role 2018.

The letter also points out that than only one-in-five people in the UK know the five-year-old official drinking guidelines, and only one in ten yet identify cancer as a health consequence of alcohol. ■