In August 2000, William Hague, then leader of the Conservative Party, told a men’s magazine that as a teenager he drank up to 14 pints of beer a day. He was widely ridiculed. Critics accused him of trying to “beef up his image” and to banish the public’s view of him as a political obsessive.
He later told the House of Commons: “I’ve had to cut back since the days of 14, quite considerably.”