Mark Daniels: Binge drinking, are advertisers to blame? Ben Shephard seems to think so...

I've just watched an interview with perhaps the world's most sensible binge drinker, if there can be such a thing.

Flicking around the news broadcasts this morning whilst waiting for my children to get ready for school I couldn't help but notice that every station shared one particular story, and it wasn't Alan Duncan's Shadow Cabinet demotion for moaning about living on rations.

It was, of course, alcohol.

But while most of the other news organisations seemed to be focusing on calls from doctors to end cheap booze deals, GMTV interviewed the rather pretty Cindy Cottrell who, at the age of 22, discovered that binge drinking had left her with the liver of somebody in their forties.

Alongside her on the couch was an advertising executive, who appeared to be getting the blame for Cindy's problem.

Not from Cindy, you have to understand, but from presenter Ben Shephard. Cindy, to be fair, was sensible enough during the interview to raise her hand and accept some of the responsibility for the state she had drunk herself in to, but Ben's clever questioning techniques eventually forced her to nod and say that advertising was the problem.

Meanwhile, the ad exec wriggled his way uncomfortably through Ben's questions, all the while trying to say that it wasn't his fault that people binge drink. His argument was that they play by the rules, and they are there to advertise their client's product.

That is, after all, what advertising is about. Promoting their client's business, product, service - whatever it is they have on offer - within the guidelines given to them.

Cindy, on the other hand, has admitted previously (when her case came to light) to pre-loading. That's not to say that she didn't drink excessively in pubs and clubs either, but a drink diary highlighted in the News of the World​ magazine shows that she would drink one and a half to two bottles of wine on a Thursday and Friday night before going out and that, on Saturdays, she would consume a whole bottle of vodka at home before starting the evening process all over again.

I say Miss Cottrell is sensible not because she would consume 28 units of alcohol at home, double the weekly recommended amount for a woman, but because today she admits that she was a big part of the problem, not the purveyors and advertisers of said product.

But, despite Ben Shephard's best efforts, I don't believe the advertising companies are the root of all evil either. Rather, it is the advertised promotions themselves that are the problem, instead of the product. The aim of advertising is, after all, to get the consumer to purchase a specific product, and price is a major factor.

Citroen tell you that their cars are very Germanic, in an effort to get you to buy them instead of a BMW. Carlsberg tell you that their beer is the best in the world. Probably.

But after that it's up to you to decide what you want - is it quality, or is it price? And the biggest promoters of alcohol are the supermarkets, with their exceptionally cheap deals. That is where advertising attracts the attention of the binge drinker, and that is why people like Cindy Cottrell drink at home first: it puts them on the first steps towards oblivion without incurring the costs of doing so in nightclubs.

I'm not, for one minute, suggesting that pubs and nightclubs are innocent bystanders when it comes to the effects alcohol has on their clientèle, but the sooner it is acknowledged that the off-trade plays a serious part in this, the better. Pubs and clubs already have excruciatingly tight restrictions placed on them when it comes to selling alcohol, yet the off-trade tends to get a much more lenient ride.

This was highlighted recently during the Government's mandatory code consultation, when it was made clear that the proposed code put very little onus on the off-trade, and even more on the on-trade.

Binge drinking is a problem, and we all have a responsibility to try and control it where we can. But we don't have control of what goes on in a person's private home, and while people can pick up below-cost alcohol to take home and consume by the gallon before heading out and causing problems in the high street we will continue to have a binge-drinker's culture.

Cindy Cottrell is sensible enough to realise that she was part of the problem. It's time for the off-trade to realise they have a responsibility too.