Marie Kemplay remembers back to her childhood and her father’s motivations for carting his family across the channel. Was it all about the beer?

Ah the good old booze cruise, as British as the Queen herself. For decades us bargain hungry (cheap) Brits have been following an instinct so basic none can hope to fight it, to get one over on the tax man.

I have some especially fond memories of my father trying to convince me and my brother that our short jaunt across the channel to buy a boot full of fags and whiskey was somehow a special treat for us kids, funny that I don’t see the comparison between a wino hypermarket and Disneyland.

And then the classic line: “if anybody asks those hundreds of boxes of Benson and Hedges are for my personal use”…ok dad.

Of course P&O ferries would never endorse such unscrupulous behaviour but you might as well know that P&O offer return tickets to Calais for £32 each way. And with a crossing time of 90 minutes and 25 sailings a day, each way, you could easily be there and back within a day, along with your newly acquired selection of fine wines.

But seriously there is actually nothing illegal about stocking up on your favourite tipple en France, in fact the European Union actually regard cross border shopping as one of our fundamental rights as European citizens; a fact which upset our favourite then-chancellor Gordon Brown in 2002 when customs were finally forced to stop their draconian attempts at preventing us from enjoying ourselves. Such as confiscating our alcohol and pouring it away, a cardinal sin in my mind!

The rule is that it has to be for your own personal consumption, and who’s to say I’m incapable of polishing of 90 litres of wine and 3200 cigarettes on my own; I like to call that Saturday night thank you very much. With prices sky high over here who could blame anybody for stocking up over the channel?

For example a typical bottle of champagne in a British supermarket will set you back about £25, in one of Calais’s it can cost as little as £10. Who knew we could all afford to live the champagne lifestyle?

So I think the next time I hear the word recession I think I’ll just sit and sip my knockdown vintage Veuve Clicquot . Recession? Quelle recession?

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