Enjoying a civilised drink

Is the BBC's Panorama losing its touch? Six months have gone by and it hasn't had a programme about binge drinking that proves Britain is going down the pan and up the spout at the same time.

It had two such shows last year. Perhaps even the producers of this once-admired flagship programme have got the message that drinking has become more civilised following the introduction of new licensing laws.

But still the rumblings go on. A woman in Oxfordshire complained in a letter to The Guardian a couple of weeks ago that it was impossible to go to a pub as a result of the drunken behaviour on display.

Sorry, ma'am, it isn't like that any more - unless Oxfordshire is different to the rest of the country.

I visit pubs on a regular basis and even stage beer tastings and dinners in them, and I haven't had any bad experiences of drunken behaviour caused by liberated licensing laws.

I've also learnt just what nonsense it is to claim that young people have easy access to alcohol as a result of longer pub hours.

A few evenings ago, Adam, my elder son, said he was going to the pub with a group of friends. He returned surprisingly early and looking fed up.

"They wouldn't serve me," he moaned. "They refused to accept my student rail card - said I'd have to take my passport."

Now the son in question is not only of age but also what used to be called "a strapping lad". He towers over me - and I'm no shrimp - and he has to duck when he enters a room. If he doesn't shave for a day or two he bears a striking resemblance to Abe Lincoln.

I can't believe that any licensee would doubt his claim to be 18. But now he has to carry his passport with him when he goes for a beer with his mates.

So much for the image of underage drinkers pouring into pubs. If a giant with a six o'clock shadow to rival Fred Flintstone's has to prove his age, there's little chance of any 14 year-olds making it to the bar for a quick gallon of lager.

Now that he can - assisted by Her Britannic Majesty - get a pint, we have noticed another difference. "Have you been smoking?" my wife asked him when he came back from the Bricklayers last week.

Of course not. Adam has never smoked and has no desire to. But he'd been to a pub and returned with stale cigarette smoke clinging to his hair and clothes. Roll on July.

I suspect the reason why licensees are demanding proof of age is that the likes of Panorama and the Daily Mail have stoked up such a climate of hysteria surrounding "24-hour drinking" and bingeing by young people that they live in fear of losing their licences and their livelihoods.

On the ground, the reality is different. Peace has returned to many town centres now that not every pub shuts at 11, shovelling hundreds of people on to the streets at the same time.

And common sense has had a part to play. When extended hours were introduced, my local - a community pub well away from the city centre - announced it would remain open until 1am every night.

Within a few months the hours had been scaled back to the familiar 11pm, with an extension to midnight at the weekend.

There's no point keeping the lights on if there are no customers.

In Hertfordshire, where I live, the majority of pubs listed in the current edition of the Good Beer Guide still close in the afternoon. Last week, I crossed the border into Cambridgeshire to photograph the Queen's Head at Newton. It's one of a handful of pubs that will have been in all 35 editions of the guide when the 2008 edition appears.

It shuts at 2.30pm and doesn't open again until six. I arrived at four on a day of blistering heat, when a soothing pint of Adnams finest would have gone down well.

I was out of luck. Not much chance of drunken hordes destroying Newton, so hold the cameras, Panorama.

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