SHORTLY after Charles Kennedy was elected Liberal Democrat leader in 1999, he confessed he was determined to conquer a habit that was affecting his health. “Without doubt, my struggle with the weed is my biggest problem,” he said. But history will say it was the drink that did for him.

Yesterday, contemplating political oblivion as he bowed to the inevitable and resigned, it was difficult to remember the youthful figure he presented six years ago. Genial and quick-witted, “Chat Show Charlie” had a down-to-earth, blokeish image that appealed to voters turned off by traditional politics.

It helped him to become the most successful Lib Dem leader of modern times. Building on the party’s 1997 breakthrough under his predecessor Paddy Ashdown, in last year’s general election he saw 62 MPs elected, its highest tally since the 1920s.

Critics said it should have been a more resounding triumph, with Labour unpopular and the Tories still on the back foot. His hesitant decision to oppose the Iraq war was a rallying point for opponents of the conflict, but Kennedy was accused of a lacklustre performance. The rumours of drinking intensified.

As early as 2002, Jeremy Paxman had tried to punch through Kennedy’s defences by asking: “At home alone, do you finish off a bottle of scotch?” The Newsnight inquisitor made an unprecedented apology for asking “one question too many”. But as Kennedy has revealed, Paxman was close to the mark.

It is ironic that facing up to a drink problem should have spelt his downfall. Kennedy was very much a product of the Presbyterian standards that govern the self-reliant Highland community near Fort William, where he was brought up.

His father Ian said yesterday: “You are talking to someone who has never had a drink in his life — and I used to work at the Ben Nevis Distillery and help produce the stuff.”

Kennedy’s father came from a line of old-style Highland Liberals and Mary, his mother, was the daughter of a Clydeside docker. Their home was a tiny croft opposite Ben Nevis, built by Kennedy’s grandfather Donald, a tenant farmer.

It was a rural idyll. The infant Kennedy rose at dawn to help his grandfather with milking. The farm’s collie would desert the tiny herd to meet him on the school bus. Before dinner there might be time to use the 18-hole putting green his father built in the back garden.

According to his mother, he had an even character from an early age. “I remember him then as a very happy child, always smiling,” she recalled. “His grandparents lived next door and he spent all his time round there helping to milk the cows or muck out the horse.”

Despite all this exercise Kennedy showed little aptitude for sport. “I was always the last child in the line-up when they were picking teams at school,” he said.

Later he carried the cross as an altar boy, attended youth clubs and folk evenings, but was never the class swot.

He did have two talents; acting and oratory. At 15 he played a part in The Mikado and was fond of singing. At Lochaber high school, he was a star of the debating society, winning a prize for oratory.

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