Is there anything wrong with a lunchtime tipple? In an interview with the November issue of Tatler, Boris Johnson apparently talks up the benefits of a couple of pints on his afternoon work as a journalist. Not for him nodding off over the keyboard as the hops take their toll: “I find it gives me wings after lunch,” he says.

While some of us might stop at a cheeky half, BoJo reckons it’s OK to go even further. “Bill Deedes insisted on going out to lunch and he would always have two pints, and the thing about two pints at lunch is that you don’t feel drunk, you just feel ever so slightly superb,” he says.

Of course, journalists have long had a reputation for boozy lunches – contacts are often met in pubs or restaurants, and if someone else is paying it can be difficult to say no. And, unlike some professions, there is only limited damage we can do if we return to the office half-cut. But although we might feel “ever so slightly superb” it’s unlikely our output is.

Once, when I edited an investment magazine, I wrote the news pages after drinking three halves of Old Rosie at a Christmas lunch (I hadn’t realised quite how strong it was). My fingers whizzed across the keyboard and the copy flowed on to the page far more quickly than usual. It was only the next day I realised that what I’d produced wasn’t quite as lucid as I imagined and I probably needed a few more references to rates of return and a few less to polar bears.

Other occupations lend themselves even less well to lunchtime drinking, and in many workplaces it is a breach of contract to have consumed any amount of alcohol. And it’s not just work involving heavy machinery where drinking is banned – 10 years ago Halifax forbid its treasury staff from boozing in their breaks. Three years ago a survey showed that 57% of businesses had banned drinking during the working day – a number which is likely to have grown rather than shrunk.

As is often the case, Johnson’s words seem a little old-fashioned. I know very few people now who have a lunchtime drink with any kind of regularity – it tends to be no more than a pint to celebrate the occasional birthday or Christmas. Journalists certainly seem to spend less time in the pub than they did a few years ago. So has the mood changed? Is it less socially acceptable than it was, or are we all just too busy?

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