The crowd does have that ‘I’m desperately looking for a footballer’ feel to it, and the guys, who you begin to think might just have spent as long getting ready as the girls, with fancy hair and pointy shoes, but that’s cool, Clapham needs a smart, semi-pretentious clubby bar.

Whilst in the midst of the biggest recession in living history, does a nation internationally renowned for hard drinking consume even more? With brand booze seemingly ‘on tap’ at most supermarkets, and even a Champagne price war going on that caters for the higher echelons as well, is it no wonder that alcohol is now officially as big a problem as everyone thinks it is?

Time team with a corkscrew. Tim digs deep into the histiry of wine in Britain and tries some of our finest efforts so far

Ajay Patel and his wife Bhavna bought a run-down shop that only sold newspapers, cigarettes and sweets in Teddington in 1992. Their vision was to eventually specialise in sales of tobacco, cigars and accessories. The shop on Broad Street started selling lots of stuff that needed to be weighed – tobacco, chocolates etc, so the name Broadweighs was created and the future began.

So, everything seems to be falling apart at the financial seams, which is obviously quite concerning, but like with all things, there’s always good to be had from bad times. Waitrose, the supermarket, recently reported that sales of their £5-7 wines had dwindled almost into insignificance, whereas sales of wine above £10 had shot through the roof, Champagne too.