Baby, it's a drinking sham

She's barely two months old but already my baby has been banned from more bars than Jeffrey Bernard - and she only drinks milk. It's proving harder than I imagined to take the little one for a quiet drink. Not so long ago, I used to take several factors into account when planning in which bar to idle away an evening: my cocktail glass should be chilled, the decor decadent and the licence late. Now I need to know one thing: do the staff like children?

This dramatic change in my drinking regime has been prompted by the arrival of Delphi, our baby daughter. Driven by a desire to avoid becoming a housebound dinner party-throwing couple, my wife Charlotte and I decided life should carry on as normal. It hasn't been easy.

We soon found out that our local pub doesn't allow children after 7.30pm, despite being almost constantly empty, and that Sand, an award-winning bar which I had praised in a previous incarnation as a bar reviewer, was similarly disinclined to entertain babies - although the manageress was polite enough to look a little shamefaced as she turned us away.

The low point, when we were despairing that we might never drink again, came when we headed for the Clapham Picture House, which sometimes hosts parents-and-baby screenings on Thursday mornings. Surely its bar would be more accommodating?

No it would not - we were greeted by a note on the door proclaiming no room at the inn for toddlers. I called the Home Office to find out Delphi's legal position. "It's quite complicated," said a spokeswoman. "It is very confusing as far as children are concerned. Basically, at the moment children under 14 can be in gardens, family areas or eating areas." She paused, before concluding: "Take her for a walk and sit her in the beer garden."

But what happens if I don't want to sit in a beer garden with plastic slides and dirty sandpits? Clapham has the politically correct Bread and Roses pub, which has a back room licensed to take children of any age until 9.30pm and has toys, high chairs and a no-smoking policy before 6pm. That's all well and good but no use to me - I have enough of high chairs and toys at home. I want a bit of glamour and sophistication.

Desperate times inspire desperate measures. Next door to the Picture House lies the Sequel - reckoned by some to be the best restaurant in south London. Here, the staff cleared a table outside and, as well as making space for the pram, insisted on making a selection of cocktails for us to try.

The drinks were accompanied by what they described as "global food" (that's raw tuna). When it began to rain they offered us a place inside, but, our spirits buoyed, we declined and moved on.

The success of the Sequel inspired us to travel farther afield with the new-found belief that the better the bar, the more accommodating it would be.

With that in mind, the next outing saw us rush up to Brasserie Max at the Covent Garden Hotel. I stepped through the door with the baby asleep in my arms. She was welcomed as a long lost friend by the charming manageress and was slowly passed around a table of drinkers who all stopped to admire her.