It's no surprise that the elderly often reach for the bottle The old are drinking too much - more than the under-40s, a survey has found. I should know; I'm one of them. Some time ago I made a Panorama film about just this subject. When I was first approached by the producer I protested strongly: "No, no, no! It's the young rolling around in the gutter who are the real problem. In fact, I had only ever seen teenagers rolling in the gutter twice, but I believed the headlines and quickly made the deduction that this must be a national crisis. Now she was pointing the finger at my own generation. I made my objections clear. I absolutely refuse to tell my contemporaries who are enjoying their declining years - years in which friends die and death threatens - not to raise a glass whenever they want. She deployed cunning tactics and suggested I keep a drinking diary of my own alcoholic intake for a month. I rose to the bait. I was provided with a dinky camera and off I went. Every day through a sunny summer month I recorded the bottle tipping, the liquid flowing and the glass reaching my lips. Day after day. Not just the medley of social events that engulf my kind of life - book launches, theatre visits with intervals, receptions, quiet dinners with friends, the occasional garden party... No, not just these temptations, but also at home and alone. This is the killer, of course. Many old people live alone and many of them are not as relentlessly sociable as I am. They get lonely, they can get depressed. Let's face it, at my age almost everyone is left with a smattering of disappointed hopes and no time to do anything about it. Too late to climb that mountain, sail that ocean, build that dream house. But too late also to make up for broken relationships, damaged bonds, neglected friends. When you sit and brood, a glass can be comforting. So when it came to totting up my month's alcoholic intake, I found to my horror that I was way over the officially recommended amount. So suddenly, as well as being the Panorama reporter, I was also the subject in question. Not surprisingly I listened keenly to the expert young doctor - a liver specialist at Portsmouth hospital - who was finding his caseload of older drunks getting ever heavier. I concluded that my own drinking was at the lesser end of excessive and took his advice, which was to allow for a week or two now and then without any drink at all. This, apparently, for us steady-but-modest drinkers, would be enough to help the liver have a breather. But the programme demonstrated to me just how easy it can be to slip into heavier patterns. I met a widow who, mourning her loss, found herself regularly knocking back a bottle of red wine a day. She was wise enough to take action, ask for counselling and get herself off the habit. But I wonder how many others dealing with the emotional roller-coaster that is bereavement use alcohol to take the edge off the pain. Again, I met a retired academic whose life, suddenly emptied of its intellectual challenge and like-minded colleagues, seemed to lack meaning and direction. I sympathise. Ageing deprives us of the sense of purpose that drives us forward through our earlier and, indeed, middle years. Suddenly we aren't going anywhere, aiming for anything specific. We take pleasure in rounds of golf and bridge, of weekends away and cheap afternoon seats at the cinema. Some of us may even opt to study for a late degree. Or they may take up a major challenge in the world of volunteering. I understand that Voluntary Service Overseas - VSO - takes people in their sixties. But the golden years of flourishing are gone for ever. And so it isn't at all surprising that a glass of something tasting as delicious as always and raised in the company of friends remains one of life's reliable and welcome pleasures.