SOME YEARS ago this newspaper accidentally announced the impending end of the world. With typical understatement, we did so discreetly. It happened in the Weekend section of a Saturday edition when a sub-editor working on the church services column mischievously decided not to insert “Third Sunday before Advent”, or whatever was supposed to be at the top of the piece, but “Third Sunday before Armageddon”. The sub meant to switch it back before the page was printed but forgot. The better part of a million copies were printed.

In fairness, the readership took it in their collective stride. Either confident of their futures or worryingly irreligious, this stunning sentence passed largely without their comment. A few people did telephone in on the Monday to inquire (a) were we sure? or (b) how did we know? or, in one or two cases, (c) if so, might it not have been an idea to put this story on the front page?

Allowing for the coverage that the change in the licensing laws, which formally occurs this Thursday, has received, the headline “Third Day before Armageddon” might be appropriate this morning. Rarely has any innovation in public life been greeted with so many dire predictions of doom. To believe some of what has been written, the world might as well be about to end on Thursday. Which is all rather sad, what with Thursday being Thanksgiving in the United States, normally a touching family occasion, and it is a shame to think that any organised soul who made the effort to buy the Christmas presents earlier than usual this year may have wasted their time and money.

Then again, the choice of November 24 might have been inspired. Nothing much has ever occurred on this date before, so the end of the world, or even the end of British society, would usefully fill the void.

The few events of note associated with November 24 include the discovery of Tasmania, the Battle of Lookout Mountain in the US Civil War in 1863 and the opening of Gigi with Audrey Hepburn in the lead role. Oh, and it’s Ian Botham’s 50th birthday (and while it would be nice to conclude that civil servants in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport had opted to open up the nation’s pubs to celebrate Ian’s big 5-0, unfortunately, I rather doubt it).

On reflection, though, there is one deed linked to this date that opponents of this legislation can alight upon. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species first hit the bookshops of Victorian Britain on November 24, 1859, and the advent of “24-hour drinking” might be considered by some to represent evolution being thrown dramatically and damningly into reverse gear.

Except that there is not going to be any “24-hour drinking” in the manner that the critics have misleadingly implied (though Mr Botham on his birthday may come close to it). There are about 200,000 pubs, clubs and hotels with a licence to serve alcohol. Of these, 80,000, or 40 per cent, sought an extension of any kind; the majority did not. Of them, 40,000, or half of the applicants, managed to alter their arrangements without new conditions being imposed on them.

A tiny collection of about 165 pubs, 75 clubs and 110 hotels have sought and won the theoretical right to serve drink around the clock — and even then almost every one of them intends to do so only infrequently. This figure constitutes 0.4375 per cent of those establishments that wanted different hours and 0.175 per cent of the entire assembly of pubs, clubs and hotels available.

Nor are we destined for much “22-hour drinking”, “20-hour drinking”, or “18-hour drinking” for that matter. The overwhelming majority of those places that will open longer will do so for one or two extra hours. Not every customer will hang around the bar later. Some people do, after all, have homes that they will want to go to. This will not be, for the vast proportion of the nation, an alcoholic “big bang”, as one commentator asserted last week. It will be more of a small pop.

Does this mean that no one will be found wandering the streets in a state of inebriation? Of course not. That happens already. I have no doubt that there will be shock stories plastered across the press very shortly. As I write, there is probably a crack team of Daily Mail reporters in a former army training camp somewhere, sleeping during the day so that they can stay up through the night, armed with hidden cameras located in the bottom of a phoney bottle of Bacardi Breezer, to acquire sensational photographs.

The real issue, nonetheless, is not whether licensing reform leads to “more drinking”, but can it, as it should, in time result in different drinking and in better drinking? The true test is whether the English will come to appreciate that drinking no longer needs to be a sprint, that it is permissible to be seated while imbibing alcohol and that, if one must mix chicken vindaloo with lager, it is better to ingest the former before the later and not, as has become the norm, vice versa.

Which means that these new hours must not be judged on what might be seen at the first time of asking. The Government has, in my view needlessly and nervously, declared that it will undertake a “review” in April. It would have been wiser to have seen the system work for more than a full year. If April it is to be, then let it be five months, not five minutes, in which that assessment is conducted. This is not “Three Days before Armageddon”. It might even be three days before the start of an era of common sense British drinking.

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