Good on Hayley Holt for facing her demons and being brave enough to air them out loud.
Good on Hayley Holt for facing her demons and being brave enough to air them out loud.
There is a movement alive and well in this country, following similar trends in the United States, of abstaining from drinking.
On that note, I see two pieces of news just this week around alcohol: one, that Breakfast TV host Hayley Holt, a self-admitted functioning alcoholic, is now loving her life since giving up the booze, and two, the Advertising Standards Authority ruling that former Olympic rower Eric Murray shouldn't have featured in beer ads.
He shouldn't have been in them, it is argued, because he's a "hero of the young".
I applaud these moves.
Good on Holt for facing her demons and being brave enough to air them.
If it even helps one person in a similar situation, she has done a great service. It's tough to be in the public eye, under scrutiny, and to come forward and admit stuff that may change people's perceptions of you.
Thankfully we live in a time where that's more laudable than terrible. It will only serve her, and those she's helped, well. Being transparent, admitting mistakes and taking responsibility for your own actions is brave and smart.
Which leads me to Murray. The ASA ruled in favour of Alcohol Healthwatch's complaint that "a hero to the young", as the code for advertising of alcohol guidelines stipulates, should not be advertising beer.
Murray and his rowing partner Hamish Bond won gold in the coxless pair events in London 2012 and Rio 2016. Murray retired from international rowing last year and has worked with many school communities and students since.
The ASA ruled this made him a hero to the young, so he shouldn't have been used in unrestricted advertisements about beer. The alcohol industry has a lot of questions to answer given it seemed unable to work that out for itself.
What Eric Murray wore in a beer commercial doesn't define whether he's a hero.
One of its arguments was that Murray wasn't wearing sporting attire in the ads. But what he's wearing doesn't discern whether he's a hero to the young or not.
What this shows us is that the alcohol industry seems still unable to regulate itself. It's looking for ways to get around the guidelines for its own self-promotion.
This doesn't really instil hope for us that the alcohol industry is protecting young people, or even is aware of the negative impact its promotion to young people can have.
Perhaps even more concerning than the beer ads, though, is the more subtle promotion of cheap ready-to-drink or RTD mixes. The favoured tipple of most young people, especially girls, is sickly sweet little drinks with names like Long White, Vodka Cruiser, Mist Wood - names that belie the truth of what they're actually drinking.
No, it's not the alcohol industry's job to patrol what our young people choose to drink - but it is their obligation, when promoting these drinks, to at least act responsibly.
