ONE in three of us is too fond of the sauce if the latest alcohol statistics for the South West are to be believed.

The research was commissioned by a new organisation called Public Health Action, which I’m sure is full of sincere people on a mission to prevent misery.

Fortunately for those of us who think we might have crossed the boundary between our drinking the drink and the drink drinking us, the Swindon area has plenty of excellent resources. E-mailing abcteam@swindon.gov.uk would be a good start.

As to those of us who have no idea whether we should be worried, it would be really helpful if Public Health Action and all the other organisations in this crowded field got together and agreed on some ground rules.

If they could decide for starters exactly how much is too much, how often is too often, what is good and what is bad, that’d be great.

As we enter the run-up to Christmas, most of us will be using the traditional means of telling whether we’ve had too much to drink.

Falling over, for example, is usually a pretty good indicator, especially if you fall over so much in a short period of time that you eventually decide to stay on the ground, thereby avoiding further injury.

Mistaking features of friends’ and loved ones’ houses for other features of their houses can also be a clue. Mistaking their fridge for a lavatory, say, or their dog’s basket for your own bed back at home.

The morning after a bout of drinking, there can also be little clues that one might have overindulged, such as being asked for a divorce or finding oneself in a cell.

We tend to rely on these clues more than official advice because official advice is all over the place.

One week we’re told it’s perfectly okay to have a drink with our evening meals, but the next we’re told that having a modest glass of wine with dinner is the first step on a slippery slope that’ll end with our putting Special Brew on our cornflakes, just to stop the morning shakes.

Depending on which report we read, four or five pints of beer or glasses of wine on a Friday night makes us either perfectly ordinary human beings or in the same bracket as Oliver Reed.

Strangely, what all the compilers of these reports have in common is that they tend to be paid pretty decently for their work.

While I’m sure they believe in what they’re doing, perhaps they should try a different approach, such as analysing what it is about life in 2015 that turns so many of us into boozehounds in the first place.

Mind you that might bring ‘em into conflict with the politicians ultimately responsible for handing out the research grants.