Killer we choose to ignore

is it a matter of sympathy for a grieving family, though the late MP has

undoubtedly left broken hearts behind him. It is the continuing denial

of a reality which, every year, destroys some of the ablest people in

the land.

Everyone knows why Sir Nicholas died. For most of his life, he drank

far too much; by the end of his career, he was a hopeless alcoholic. The

liver disease that finally killed him was, undoubtedly, down to booze.

But the many tributes now being paid are silent. They are as silent as

they were when playwright John Osborne and comedian Peter Cook died

about the turn of the year. They, too, were brilliant personalities.

Both, as everyone knows and no-one will say, were slain by the bottle.

The list is endless. Footballers, like George Best or Jim Baxter, have

declined into decrepit, shambling obesity after years of heavy drinking.

Some of the greatest writers of this century -- Faulkner, Fitzgerald --

pickled their brains into sausagemeat. Dylan Thomas, that lyricist of

the valleys, died a squalid death from booze 40 years ago. Royalty are

not immune: the late Duke of Gloucester was a notorious drunkard.

He, at least, was able to hide his weakness from the public. For

Fairbairn, there was at the last no retreat. In his final years, he was

often visibly ''unwell'' on television. He would stand to speak in the

Commons, swaying unnervingly, his face the hard mask of the inebriate.

Fairbairn, in his day, had a delicious wit. ''The Honourable Lady

herself was once an egg,'' he taunted Edwina Currie in the Commons at

the height of the salmonella frenzy, ''and many on both sides of the

House regret its fertilisation.'' Latterly, he was more crude than

funny. His incoherent, vulgar Commons speech on sodomy, during the ''age

of consent'' debate a year ago, was perhaps the seediest low of his

career.

He appeared little in the Commons after that. Months before his death,

he was too sick to attend. Fairbairn was even excused from the

confidence debate last November. Humane consideration apart, Tory whips

no longer trusted him to vote or speak the right way.

Yet there is nothing in the papers of the late Member but jolly

anecdotes, compliments paid to his fine legal mind, affectionate

remembrance of his astonishing gifts, a polite skiting-over of his

complicated personal life. His inglorious career in government -- three

years as Solicitor-General culminated in a caddish affair and drunken

indiscretions to the press -- was minimised.

Of the drink, and of the alcoholism, there was not a mention at all.

Why?

It reflects, of course, our tendency to like drunks. They can be fun.

Of notable squiffies we collect anecdotes. ''Madam, may I have this

dance?'' mumbled George Brown in the late sixties, leering into the face

of a gloriously robed figure at some diplomatic function. ''No, Foreign

Secretary,'' came the crisp reply. ''First you're drunk. Secondly, the

band is playing the National Anthem. And third, I am the Cardinal

Archbishop of Malta.''

Barely a decade later, Lord George Brown was a sozzled nobody. His

left serious politics and joined the SDP. Shortly afterwards, papers

published a photo of the peer lying in a gutter. The party hoot died in

1985, a pitiable bore.

There is also our wont to glamorise hard drinking. This is notoriously

true of my own profession. The spirits drunk neat are as much a part of

the Bogartarian archetypal journalist as the slouch-hat, trench-coat and

untipped cigarettes. Likewise the serious author. Ernest Hemingway began

drinking because he liked the stuff; he started to drink heavily,

because it suited the image of grim masculinity he wanted to cultivate.

The day came when Hemingway could not quit. He died, almost certainly,

by his own hand.

Beyond this, too, is a kind of strange romanticism -- the attitude

that delights in lost causes, dashed hopes, eternal might-have-been. The

fumes of ethanol give failure a weird dignity. What he might have done,

but for the bottle! How high he might have flown, save for the fatal

flaw! Thus with that brilliant writer of Scots landscape, Gavin Maxwell,

lost prematurely in 1969. Biographers make much of his uneasy

homosexuality, his chain-smoking, his inability to handle money. They

tiptoe past the obvious: that Maxwell, who latterly downed two litres of

whisky a day, was a hopeless alcoholic.

Then there is plain conspiracy. It is in the nature of the habitual

drunkard that his social life is confined, more and more, to the company

of fellow drinkers. Not all his trusties, by any means, are drunkards

themselves. But the psychology of guilt, when he is finally destroyed,

drives them to denial. Nicky a lush? No way. And so I recall a gifted

Glasgow clergyman, ruined by the bottle, and how afterwards his friends

-- many of whom had shared a dram with him, some night of a Communion --

afterwards had ''hardly known him'', or ''never suspected a thing''.

Or the polymathic dentist, part of the medical establishment in a

Scottish town, whose drinking killed him -- but he died in an oncology

ward , denied all appropriate treatment for advanced cirrhosis, because

none of his colleagues would admit what was as plain as a pikestaff.

Their silence killed him. The death certificate said ''kidney failure''.

Like many doctors and dentists who die of drink, and whose colleagues

cover up, he is absent from drink-related death statistics.

None of this is an argument for teetotalism. I have seen militant

abstinence, and it does not work; children not taught sensible drinking

habits at home acquire bad ones elsewhere. I myself like drink very

much. But I am not such a fool as to think of myself immune to a future

problem. The ''disease model'' of alcoholism -- that only some

genetically disadvantaged minority develop it -- is a myth. Anyone who

drinks too much, too often, and without wisdom will become a drunkard.

That terrible disease, Aids, is not denied. Many victims in public

life have bravely come out as sufferers; such are to be admired.

Drunkenness in high places remains taboo. We in the media are well aware

of the soaks in public life. Why do we cover up for them? Celebrities

die frequently from the bottle. Why is the cause denied?

Drink is a God-given mercy. The abuse of drink is a living hell. It is

death on the roads, heartbreak in the home, ruin in affairs, duplicity

in relationship, shame and scorn in the fall. The drunken lifestyle is

far from endearing. The drunkard's death is a warning to be wailed from

the housetops. Such epitaphs as ''colourful'', ''engaging'' and

''lovable'' belittle the heartbreak wreaked in an alcoholic's life. They

pay poorly for squandered gifts and wasted talent. And they will ring

hollow, mocking, in Sir Nicholas Fairbairn's tomb.