Graham Coxon from Blur spoke candidly recently to the Blank podcast about alcohol addiction and the harsh reality of starting as a casual drinker and then ending up in week-long benders.

He said: “I do believe that I was probably an alcoholic when I was five or six, it was ready, it was sitting there, just because of the sort of person I was, the mind I had, I just had to wait 10 years to find the thing that went, ‘Whoa, that’s fantastic, I’ve just had two glasses of wine and all of that has disappeared, I feel cool as a cucumber, I’m a success at parties…’ Well you kind of think you are.”

“I think the reason I drank in the first place was because of anxiety, I think I always suffered from anxiety … I didn’t know it was anxiety, I just thought that mild buzz of embarrassment and nervousness was what it felt to live, I thought that’s what being alive felt like. But I realised at some point in my teenage years that a bottle of wine just shut all of that off, shut it down, stopped the negativity.”

Graham ditched the sauce many years ago after booking himself in at the Priory.

George Millington