GRAHAM NORTON reveals his relationship with alcohol in unflinchingly honest account of his love affair with the bottle

The eerie wailing of my alarm jolted me from sleep. As I heaved my sagging carcass out of bed, it felt like the middle of the night, but I had to be up early because I was covering the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Radio 2 while he took a fortnight’s holiday.

I made my way down to the kitchen through the dark, quiet house and set about making some breakfast. The tea poured, I opened the fridge and returned to my steaming mug. I looked down and realised that I wasn’t holding the milk — I had grabbed a bottle of white wine.

That says all you really need to know about my relationship with booze: when in doubt, grab a drink. When in joy, or sadness, or boredom, grab a drink.

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Booze can be a very tricky friend or lover. I don’t enjoy waking up when I fall off the kitchen counter where, for some drunken reason, I have decided to make my bed, but for me that is a small price to pay for the hours of fun enjoyed the night before.

Drugs have, of course, crossed my path from time to time, but for me it has always been about the bottle. It’s easy to buy, I can consume it in public and it doesn’t involve hanging around street corners waiting for some Range Rover with blacked-out windows to pull up.

I haven’t always been a drinker. Obviously there was a time in my life when I was a child, and there wasn’t much booze in the house at all when I was growing up in Bandon, a small town in the south-east of Ireland.

My father was a travelling sales rep for Guinness and visited dozens of pubs, so he knew how destructive drinking could be. If we had visitors, tumblers of gin and tonic might be handed around, but even they were fairly exotic. When it came to ice cubes, well, guests were as likely to find a piece of moon rock in their drink.

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I wasn't always a drinker growing up in small town Ireland, but arriving at University I made up for lost time

At 18, I became a student at the University of Cork and it was as if I was making up for lost time. Of course everyone encounters alcohol when they leave home, but not everyone turns into the massive boozehound I did.

What was it about drinking that I liked so much? For me it has always been a social thing — yes, I might have a glass of wine in front of the TV, but I enjoy it so much more when doing it with others.

And the reason I took to it so enthusiastically was simple: it helped me fit in. Even now when I walk into some showbiz bash, I feel a rush of teenage fear and insecurity. Where’s the waiter with the tray? Find him then let the small talk begin!

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Booze can be a strange new friend when you are getting to know each other

My first year in Cork saw me riding high, making friends and enjoying my lectures. I’d found my tribe: pretentious 18-year-olds who read novels for pleasure, watched films with subtitles and strode purposefully across the campus in flapping, over-sized trench coats.

Booze can be a strange new friend when you are getting to know each other, and there are many lessons to learn along the way.

One early teething problem was the dreaded ‘wheelies’, that sensation that the whole room is spinning. On numerous occasions as a student I found myself lying on bedsit floors while in my head I was on a transatlantic yacht — Nature’s way of saying it was time for bed.

The other side-effect, much harder to shake, was the tendency to vomit. At least I usually managed to make it to the bathroom in time.

My second year at university could not have been more different. After thinking that I had found my footing, I had a bad case of self-indulgent teenage angst and slowly began to feel more and more like an outsider.

The following summer I dropped out of university and ran away to Los Angeles where I had a pen-pal named David. From there I moved to a hippy commune in San Francisco where most of the residents were vegetarian and the only alcohol consumed on the premises was the occasional bottle of beer.

I wasn’t sure they would approve of my wild nights out, so I became very good at disguising my drinking and hangovers — or so I thought. One morning I was having my breakfast at the kitchen table as various housemates came and went. One by one, they all asked me if I was all right. I assured them that I was feeling fine.

I finished my cereal before heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth. The face that stared back at me from the mirror came as a bit of a shock. All down one side of my head was dried vomit.