ONCE upon a time in Bolton, so I was told years ago, town centre folk such as journalists, solicitors, accountants and business types would meet for a lunchtime chinwag in establishments such as the Commercial Hotel and the Victoria pub.

Business was done and information was traded in a convivial and useful manner before the demolition men moved in to clear the sites for Mothercare and Marks & Spencer respectively.

Later generations — including mine — found it useful to wind down for a while in the Crown and Cushion in Mealhouse Lane or at the Lower Nag’s Head — off Deansgate and down the steps.

Those pubs are also long gone and so is the general lunchtime culture that sustained them.

The reasons include drink and drive legislation, rising prices, reductions in the size of workforces, the need to concentrate on computer screens and, above all, the modern phenomenon of a lunch hour that lasts 10 minutes or so.

Modern business people still “network” occasionally at lunchtimes — if they can get away from their desks — but in my experience they are usually keen to show their dynamic side by drinking orange juice or sparkling water rather than anything stronger.

Things have changed at all levels in the working world and I think the producers of Coronation Street fail to realise this when they show management and staff from the knicker factory apparently spending their mid-day break in the Rovers Return.

Baffling, then, that the Bolton Primary Care Trust — quite rightly concerned about the level of alcohol abuse in the town — feels it is necessary to suggest that employers should impose rules designed to discourage employees from having a lunchtime pint or glass of wine.

In the great majority of cases this battle has already been won.

Determined souls who insist on taking a proper break — something not always easy to do these days — will not necessarily find many fellow workers standing at the bar when they get to the pub.

Bolton might well be in the top 20 areas of the UK blighted by alcohol problems, but I find it difficult to believe that the PCT has got it right when it targets modern workers and their employers.

The lunchtime booze culture does not exist any more for most workers and there is, frankly, no need for intervention that would stir “nanny state” antipathy and probably have the exact opposite of the effect intended.

Happy as I was to welcome the introduction of the smoking ban, there is enough of a libertarian streak in me to believe that the few people who still want to drink moderately at lunchtimes should not be made to feel that they are doing something wrong and sinful.

The real problems are well-documented and include cheap supermarket alcohol consumed by youngsters in parks, town centre drinks promotions, drug-taking mixed with alcohol, too much boozing at home and the number of older people — retired maybe — who spend much of their day in licensed premises drinking more than is good for them.

Boozy lunchtimes are mostly a thing of the past in Bolton — the PCT is pushing at an open door.