Celebrities jump on the wagon

Traditionally, celebrities can be relied upon to be drunken and debauched, decadent and depraved.

It goes with the territory; an inevitable consequence of having your every dream fulfilled, your every whim catered to, and a sycophantic entourage on 24-hour call. Which is fine, because their bacchanalian thrill-filled forays through a seedy but exclusive underworld have proved endlessly entertaining to us non-celebrity spectators.

But lately, a worrying trend towards cleanliness and sobriety has ravaged celebrity society. It's got to the point where, currently, any celebrity even vaguely concerned with maintaining the fa?ade of a fashionable existence wouldn't contemplate being seen in public without one of three vital accessories: a bottle of mineral water; an AA 12-step guide; or a sobriety coach.

Robbie Williams recently announced that he is to open a new, alcohol-free London club. He wants to create an environment where everybody, including recovering alcoholics, can hang out and party without having to confront temptation. He's planning to call it Rebos ? sober, backwards. As if this wasn't enough to seriously disrupt the hedonism-addled set, Liam Gallagher was recently spotted calmly sharing a bottle of mineral water with Nicole Appleton, former Mo?t-happy hellcat of the Chinawhite scene. Sister Natalie is also rumoured to have adopted more subdued partying habits, as has Damien Hirst. He's downsized his lifestyle and holed up in a private-members'-bar-free West Country idyll.

Even Meg Mathews is rumoured to be eschewing the booze in favour of regular forays into old schoolmate Tabitha Ritchie's new 'boutique-themed' juice bar, Naked Health, in Earl's Court. Gwyneth Paltrow is also currently sober. 'I used to drink vodka and tonic all the time,' she told journalists during a Shallow Hall junket, 'but I found my kidneys got really hard because of it, and I noticed that my liver wouldn't drop down in my yoga back bends.' Craig David can't even claim he's a reformed party freak. 'I haven't been to that many celebrity bashes,' he recently told NME, in an interview entitled 'It's Great When You're Straight', 'because I'm singing live all the time and it's difficult to stay out late in a smoky atmosphere.' What kind of an example is that to set impressionable young fans?

Of course, while we don't particularly have any issue with the genuinely alcoholic cleaning up, there is something rather Ben Affleck about all this random embracing of a healthier lifestyle; something a bit sober for the sake of it. When Affleck checked into recovery centre Malibu Promises last August, openly admitting he was seeking treatment for alcohol abuse, it all seemed rather unnecessary. He hadn't exhibited any of the usual signs, for a start. Unlike your trad breed of rehab-bound Hollywood addict, Affleck's weight hadn't yo-yoed (in the style of Matthew Perry), and there hadn't been any reports of his unhinged, lawless antics (? la Robert Downey Jnr). 'Ben is a self-aware and smart man who has decided that a fuller life awaits him without alcohol,' his publicist, David Pollick, announced at the time. Others speculated that Ben's experiences of an alcoholic father might have prompted him to overreact to one hangover too many.

Opinion is therefore divided on the true significance behind the current sober mood. There are those who claim it's an extension of the 11 September effect, a literal interpretation of the sobering impact the terror attacks had on celebrity society in general. And there are those who maintain it's little more than Power Sobriety ? sobriety in the name of spin. After all, there's something extraordinarily compulsive about a star who's tasted the lows, flirted with the demons, and is now struggling to get on the straight and narrow. As Robbie told Parky earlier this year: 'I've been trying to get sober for the past four years. It's because I get an awful amount of success and I don't think I deserve it and then I want to sabotage it.' How vulnerable, flawed and ultimately more worthy of our adulation a star with that kind of self-awareness is, eh?

Presumably, for some, vanity also comes into it. Geri Halliwell might not have openly renounced booze, but you don't maintain a body like that on a hefty Cosmopolitan habit. Plus she was recently spotted in Teatro downing ten glasses of milk. Of course, as extreme thinness becomes increasingly de rigueur among the A-list, it's hardly surprising that alcohol should get sidelined in the quest to axe all those unnecessary calories from a dietary regime.

But ultimately, maybe it's as simple as this: debauchery just isn't that cool any more. Since Jordan trashed the brand with her unseemly goings-on at assorted awards ceremonies and apr?s-premiere parties, maybe hedonism has lost its allure. And, as we tremble on the brink of the extreme party season, maybe we should all pause for a moment, and think hard about the potential damage a spate of drunkenness and decadence might do to our rep as definitively hip Londoners. And then again, maybe not.