The first time I got drunk was at a wedding. I was 12 or thereabouts and sick in the taxi on the way home. I’d like to say that set the pattern for my behaviour at weddings thereafter, but it goes way beyond that. (My Uber rating is not good.) I acquired a taste for alcohol that’s stayed with me ever since. Other intoxicants have come and gone, but I’ve always returned to my first love.

Which, to be clear, is wine. That first illicit tipple was Babycham – which is basically wine, right? – so perhaps my lifelong passion has been an attempt to recreate that childhood pleasure. As madeleines were to Proust, Babycham is to me. Not that I drink the revolting muck now. These days my taste runs to the pricier stuff. Caroline says it’s a toss-up which outcome my love of wine will bring about first – death or bankruptcy. My money’s on bankruptcy, although my alcohol-befuddled brain can’t work out whether it’s possible to bet on bankruptcy, because if you win the bet…

I used to be perfectly happy with a £10 bottle of plonk, but I was ruined by a rich friend who started inviting me shooting at his grouse moor in Northumberland and served eye-wateringly expensive wine. It was there that I was first introduced to good mature Bourdeaux – 1982 Lafite, for instance. At pudding time, out came the 2001 Yquem; the next morning, at elevenses, unlimited Rousseau, still my favourite red Burgundy. I had occasionally turned left on a plane before, and that made turning right difficult, but this was more like hopping on a private jet. After that, the Wine Society claret lost some of its lustre.

At the beginning of last year I gave myself permission........

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