Last month’s least likely claim appeared in The Times (9 July, below).

Everybody knows that drinking in the UK is out of control, driven by a combination of feckless consumers and complacent supermarkets offering cheap deals. But is everybody right?

Middle-class parents have been taken to task by the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, over what he calls their “obsession” with serving watered-down wine to their children.

Baroness Stern, charged by Harriet Harman to conduct a review into the way rape cases are handled, told the Evening Standard that being drunk was no defence. For the man, that is: she seems to take a different view of drunken women.

A string of newspapers lamented the excesses of the young in response to an NHS report detailing their illicit activities.

Sure enough, at least three newspapers - the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and Metro - today run the old news about alcohol-related deaths, pumped out by the Conservatives and commented upon here.

The Liberal Democrats have issued a press release bemoaning the increase in alcohol-related deaths in the past ten years. But it's a bit exaggerated.

Drinking can damage your liver, as we've all known for a long time. But how many moderate drinkers end up in NHS liver-wards?