Britain's alcohol problem: Our green and drunken landBeneath the bucolic tranquillity lies a dark secret: the Surrey district of Runnymede contains the nation's biggest proportion of hazardous drinkers. Jonathan Brown reports
Published: 17 October 2007
"How much do I drink?" pondered Linda Withers as she took another sip of Foster's lager served, as usual, in an oversized wine glass in the lounge bar of her local pub, the Rose and Crown. "Well, I don't fall over every day," she laughs. "But I admit we are a boozy lot."
The drinkers of Virginia Water and their well-heeled neighbours in the prosperous Runnymede area of Surrey have been branded problem drinkers. In a study by Liverpool John Moores University, the area topped the table for Britain's most hazardous drinkers. To qualify in the study as a hazardous imbiber it seems you must consume between 22 and 50 units of alcohol per week. In other words: two bottles of wine for men and one and a half for women.
The study has given rise to the thesis that Britain's wealthiest areas contain its most determined recreational drinkers – raising the fear that Middle England is sitting astride an alcohol time bomb set to explode some time soon with an epidemic of liver problems, heart disease and cancer.
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