But such denial couldn’t last long. This programme, the ninth in Mark Whitaker’s ten-part history series on the politics of alcohol in Britain, focuses on the decision by government in 1962 to build specialist alcoholic treatment units around the country. It was called “the first official recognition of alcoholism as an illness which should be the responsibility of doctors”, and was an acknowledgement that drinking was on the increase. (This period saw the first specific warnings about teenage drinking.)

But controversies followed. Several Regional Hospital Boards were reluctant to invest in the new units: research suggested that in-patient treatment was not necessarily the most effective: and the strategy was attacked for being of limited value to those most in need of help – the unemployed meths drinkers of ‘Skid Rows’ in the major cities.

This was when the pioneering psychiatrist Griffith Edwards first proposed his methods for tackling drunkenness as a public health issue, based on its being recognised as a community-wide problem. Edwards contributes to the programme, while actors read documents from the 1960s