Another day, another female celebrity announces her dependence on alcohol. A week or so ago it was Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding. Last week, it was her band mate Nicola Roberts, who said in an interview she was so upset by taunts about being “ugly” that she would dispatch her driver to buy her booze.

But women who drink are not exclusively young, or famous. They don’t roll around in the street showing their knickers, sitting on kerbs outside nightclubs.

You will probably never see them drunk or even tipsy. But they are everywhere. I don’t know one woman who does not spend all day, every day, dreaming of the moment the clock strikes 6pm, and she can have a glass of wine.

These women are not alcoholics, but drink rules their lives. And I can see how easy it is to become one of them. Who knows why the ice-cold glass of chablis or fruity warm barolo becomes such a salvation, the only highlight at the end of a long, stressful day?