When your mum taught you manners, she covered all the basics. No elbows on the table, please, thank you and covering your mouth when you cough. But when it came to teaching drinking etiquette, mine fell short (sorry mum).

Since time began, love and dating have been doused in booze. Be it a romantic dinner and a bottle of pinot, a cheeky snog anointed by rum and coke or an outrageous one-night affair after slurping on a fishbowl cocktail - Brits' love affair with dating and drinking isn't going to fizzle out any time soon.

We've got it all backwards. Horribly backwards. And its killing us. This awful catch 22 situation. If we wait to admit and accept we have a drinking problem in our society? We are waiting for end-stage alcoholism. Or alcoholic Alzheimer's. Or being arrested. Or being injured horribly.

I have written before that stress will eventually lead to people, who are normally vigilant with their diet, going 'tonto' - and losing control. Check: there is a wonderful photo of me gazing amorously at a slice of pizza like it is Monica Belluci. I didn't meet a single carb that I didn't like in Spain. Once I started eating badly, I didn't stop.

Ordering in a bar is easy; you chat to your bartender or server, and exchange some money for your goods and services. So why am I writing about it? Well, for one, have any of you felt particularly underwhelmed by a bar experience a friend has raved about? This piece is about maximising your chances of having an experience that lives up to this.

I'm quite inclined to make myself a cocktail at the end of a long day, and I'll certainly put together a few if I have friends coming over, but sometimes you just need something simple and easy.

One thing people always seem to ask me is how long the products will last. I've been served drinks in people's homes that really should've been thrown out long ago. Similarly, I've been served whiskies in bars that have simply been open too long.

Booze is even in the Bible - the first thing Noah does after the Great Flood is plant a vineyard, drink the wine, and then get his todger out in a drunken stupor, only to be discovered sleeping naked by his son. It's reassuring to know that even God's chosen zoo curator would probably have plonked a traffic cone on his head and run naked down the high street, if he'd had the opportunity to join a university rugby club.

Ironically, the 'hard drugs' we warn our children about before they hit the town kill far fewer people than alcohol or nicotine, substances which pose bigger threats to their long term health.

So, for the serious ones on the wagon, pregnant women, and people like me who shouldn't drink on medication, here are my top three non boozy alternatives to a good night out. Girly as these suggestions are, I have tried them to success out on men.

Pictures of Usain Bolt celebrating his Olympic success by partying in East London brought to mind some questions about alcohol's effects on exercise. Obviously, Bolt didn't indulge until he'd addressed the small matter of Olympic domination... So what's the final word on alcohol and exercise?

News outlets never splash the good news about alcohol do they? Because there is good news about booze and has been for the thousands of years that humans have consumed it.

If Eddie & Joe Grundy from The Archers are reading this - I have a few friends who long to join your cider club. It's true that five years ago they would have thought cider was something that only characters in Thomas Hardy novels and school kids in bus shelters consumed, but today cider is back big time. 

I have just been watching an item on morning television about British women and the way they drink. New research reveals that British women have topped a European league of binge drinking and are now as likely to overdo it as men.