Lloyds is right to ban lunchtime drinking – but in my day it was the norm

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. By 12.30pm on Fridays, my column filed, the afternoon was written off – starting with lunch at Wheelers in Soho, drinks at the Colony Club alongside Francis Bacon and Denholm Elliott, on to the French pub on Dean Street around 6pm, followed by a nightcap at Gerry’s drinking club down the road – until I fell into a cab home at 9pm. In the cut-throat macho world of the City, though, drinking at lunchtime and in the evenings remains a rite of passage – most workers see nothing incongruous about adopting a lifestyle which might combine an extreme fitness with class A drugs and buckets of booze. Since the meltdown in 2008, banks have sought to cut costs and reduce staff – and implementing a zero-tolerance regime in regard to alcohol could give them another excuse for redundancies, although you could argue that workers on existing contracts can’t have their terms of employment changed on a whim. I have a huge amount of experience with booze – having lived with an alcoholic and worked with chronic booze and substance abusers – and without sounding like a puritan, the time when you went out for a business lunch with a bottle of wine or a couple of glasses to “relax” or to “celebrate” with pals in the middle of the day have long gone.