David Penberthy: Booze and cigarettes are not the same

There is no reason for public health busybodies to treat alcohol as if it’s strychnine, yet they continue to meddle, and produce stupid studies like this one, writes David Penberthy.

George Best was lying on his bed in a five-star London hotel accompanied by that year’s Miss World when the bellboy arrived with another bottle of French champagne.

On surveying the debauched scene the bellboy looked disapprovingly at the football legend and said: “Oh, George, where did it all go so wrong?”

Best was nonplussed, reckoning the scene inside his room suggested things were travelling along pretty nicely, thanks.

A few years ago I met a wonderful man by the name of Ray Beckwith. Ray isn’t a household name but he should be, as he did more to develop the modern art of Australian winemaking than almost any other person.

Ray wasn’t a winemaker. He was a chemist. He pioneered the study of pH — acid and alkaline levels — in wine and applied the rigours of the laboratory to its production. He found he could prevent wine from spoiling by controlling its acidity to limit bacterial growth.

He started his career at Hardys but was headhunted by Penfolds where he teamed with a fellow called Max Schubert. Together they invented a cheeky little red that goes by the name of Grange Hermitage.

RELATED: James Bond was an alcoholic

George Best died from alcoholism in 2005 at the grand old age of 59. He had suffered kidney infections, his liver had collapsed and he had several blood transfusions, quipping after one that he’d been “in for 10 hours and had 40 pints, beating my previous record by 20 minutes.”

The now-defunct News of the World newspaper obtained the last photograph of the Manchester United star, taken at his hospital bed. To borrow a line from Get Carter, his eyes looked like two pissholes in the snow. His skin was the colour of a banana.

George Best was a hopeless alcoholic who died early after ruining his, and someone else’s, liver.

Ray Beckwith died in 2012. He was 100. He had been married to the same woman, a lovely lady by the name of Coral, for 60 years, outliving her by almost two decades.

When I interviewed Ray at his Barossa Valley home, I asked him what was the secret to his longevity. “Try not to drink more than one bottle of red per night,” he said, without any humour. Sage advice, Ray. I reckon a lot of us can take that on board and run with it.

We saw this week that the Medical Journal of Australia — with cancer having been cured and motor neurone disease conquered — decided to tackle the weightier matter of James Bond’s drinking habits.

In a paper entitled “007: License to Swill”, the MJA gave all us adults a free lecture about our drinking. Using Bond as the example, we were told the special agent’s incessant drinking was a wake-up call for the rest of us.

Bond’s frequent martini consumption suggested an entrenched pattern of problem drinking and he needed to get help as a matter of urgency.

Worse, Bond combined his drinking with risk-taking activities such as operating motor vehicles, speedboats, and trying to have a crack at Ursula Andress when she emerged from the ocean wearing an awesome white bikini and holding a serrated fishing knife.

In a cheap headline-grabbing sense the MJA article was a marketing triumph. It was guaranteed a run on every news service and talkback radio for a couple of days, having its desired effect at the height of the silly season.

The more I reflect on this report, for all its superficial comic value, I have concluded that us adults should feel free to greet it with a pithy four-word response — go and get stuffed.

This paper confirms the determination of the health narcs to apply the same zero-tolerance strictures that govern smoking to the question of drinking.

Winemaker Ray Beckwith demonstrated that it’s perfectly possibly to live a long and healthy life, while being a regular drinker.

I could not agree more with the assertion that every cigarette is doing you damage. Only the most unhinged and scientifically-challenged libertarian would argue otherwise.

Aside from a few outliers, smoking will almost always kill you prematurely. The same cannot be said of hitting the turps from time to time, though.

The happy and healthy centurion Ray Beckwith is a compelling Exhibit A for the prosecution of the argument.

I don’t think any reasonable person would take issue with education campaigns and crackdowns on the undeniable links between alcohol and domestic violence, road deaths, depression and illness.

Roger Moore, as martini-guzzling spy James Bond, was never meant to be a role model. Picture: Peter Ruck/BIPs/Getty Images

But for the vast majority of people, alcohol is nothing more than a harmless social lubricant, and a fine-tasting one at that, which consenting and sentient adults choose to consume to unwind with loved ones and friends.

Those of us who enjoy the odd quiet one — and the occasional loud one — should stand up to the stickybeaked wowserism epitomised by the MJA. They have no right to tell us how to behave but they intend to exercise it anyway.

Make no mistake, if they got their way, we will eventually need to register at the government-sponsored alcohol users centre to sign on and obtain a bottle of shiraz, which would feature a scalped cadaver with a burst brain clot saying THIS WAS KEN, 43, AND HE LOVED A DRINK, TOO.

The Rudd Government had a crack at combating teen drinking with its alcopops tax. Now it’s the turn of the rest of us to be treated like children.

The best backhanded advice on all this comes from Best himself, who upon being named footballer of the century in 1999 said: “It’s a pleasure to be standing here. It’s a pleasure to be standing up.”

As long as, like Ray, we manage to stand up most of the time, we should all be right too. Merry Christmas. And cheers!

@penbo

Originally published as David Penberthy: Booze and cigarettes are not the same