Drinking and documents have never been a happy combination.

Many parents will have stood by aghast as their sons and daughters, preparing for a big night on the town, begin rummaging around their room for a driving licence, or worst still, a passport.
 

For it appears that only such important documents provide adequate proof of age and identity in order to get passed doormen into clubs and popular pubs. In drink, the risks are therefore high of passports going astray — being stolen or lost in taxis or on dance floors — with all the inconvenience and potential security dangers that inevitably come with the loss of such an important document. But this week we learn that an Oxford bar has installed an ID scanner specifically for scanning driving licences and passports when people are entering the bar — so that customers’ names, age, addresses and photographs can all be stored.


The owner of the Thirst Bar takes the view that law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about. Police are said to like the idea so much that they want to see it rolled across the country.


Well, drinkers will certainly have plenty to worry about when they wake up the following morning to find no passport in their jacket pocket or handbag.

But even those who have manage to hang on to their driving licences and passports may feel uneasy about so many of their personal details being stored, relying on the competence and honesty of drinking establishments to have deleted them at the end of the night. While every organisation these days is able to fall back on “the Data Protection Act” to avoid dealing with the bulk of inquiries, it seems that once again the poor consumer is expected to reveal all, in this case for the sake of a drink.

Being treated as a suspect, it would seem, is now just part of a good night out for anyone under 30 these days. How many of our readers, sipping a glass of red in front of Newsnight, will let out a little sigh with relief that their clubbing days have been and gone.