Sir Trevor McDonald has lifted the lid on the hard-drinking culture that pervaded ITV when he joined it in 1973.

The newsreader, who has a fondness for champagne breakfasts, admitted he is a drinker who can easily sink a bottle of wine after he finishes work.

Sir Trevor said that colleagues would wait until the last minute before being coaxed from a nearby bar to appear on screen to read the news.

“There was a bar across the street and most people could be found there day and night,” he said. “My co-anchor Reggie Bosanquet had to be dragged out at five minutes to ten and persuaded to sit down. How we used to carry on working I’ll never know.”

The News at Ten presenter told Decanter magazine that he waits until he gets home in the evenings before cracking open a bottle of wine. “The problem with that is that it’s never just a glass. I get home at 11pm and then look at my watch and it’s approaching midnight and I’m on my fourth glass.”

He declined to say how much he has spent on wine but said that he was embarrassed when his wife found out. “[I spent] far too much on a Dom Pérignon at the Ritz on my wife’s credit card. Not a good idea — she discovered how much I spend on champagne.”

He has also been admonished for his habit of opening champagne at 11am on Sundays but retorts that it is midday in Paris.

Sir Trevor, 68, is now planning to build a wine cellar in the 19th-century converted vicarage he shares with his second wife Josephine and their son Jack.

“One of the tragic things about wine is that once you’ve drunk better wine, it’s terribly difficult to go back.

“There’s an auction at Sotheby’s I’m planning to attend. I’ve been salivating over the catalogue for days. I buy at the higher end of the scale. I’ve decided that’s the thing I want to spend my money on.

“I’m very much a burgundy man. They are so much more refined and sophisticated than clarets.”

His love of fine wine began in the 1970s when he had his first taste of Château Yquem, and felt unable to return to ordinary plonk. “I was bowled over. It was sensational — the kind of wine you should go down on your knees for in reverence to its greatness.

“Looking back on what we drank then, it was pretty awful — Liebfraumilch and Mateus Rosé.”

He added that during his break from reading the news he used to drink more. “I discovered how quickly your stocks dwindle when you’re home in the evenings.”

It has been reported that Sir Trevor is to leave News At Ten by the end of the year despite the fanfare when he rejoined for the relaunch in January. Sir Trevor’s delivery and the return of the “bong” sound effect between headlines attracted 100,000 more viewers than the 10.30pm bulletin it replaced but failed to match BBC One’s 10pm news audience of 4.8 million.

Ratings slid to 1.7 million in March but have rallied to 2.5 million recently.Bosanquet presented the ITN news in the 1970s. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1984 at the age of 51. He had a trademark slurred delivery and acquired nicknames such as Reginald Beaujolais and Reginald Boozalot.

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