The point is, you weren't drunk. What you were was exceptionally tired due to a combination of too much work (a coach crash during last summer's works outing decimated the department) and too little sleep (you are being woken four or even seven times a night by your sick children/ electrification of the railway line at the bottom of your garden/the necessity to get up to re-anchor the flapping plastic sheet that is acting as your roof while the builders re-timber the top floor).

As if this isn't enough to make anyone slur their words and appear to be unsteady on their feet, you suffer from this rare medical condition which you share with Reggie Bosanquet, a speech impediment which has afflicted you since childhood.

The problem, however, is not yours but Society's. What a sad reflection it is on our times that just because you happen to have a drink in your hand when you cannot enunciate your words and may even be swaying slightly, everyone assumes you must be drunk.

The best excuse ever for being drunk, by the way, came from a man lying in the gutter on Christmas Eve. He told a policeman: 'I'm not drunk. I'm a plumber from the Water Board, this lady's pipe has burst, and I've got my arm through the grate in the pavement to try to free her stop-cock.'

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