I’LL be quite candid with you here and confess I’m not one of the two million customers that pub chain JD Wetherspoon claims to attract every week.

It’s nothing personal. I don’t go to any pubs much, disliking the conviviality and sexual fraternisation, and preferring to get inebriated in the privacy of my own home, where there’s less chance of the police becoming involved, even if they still turn up from time to time with their “warnings” and variations on the Heimlich manoeuvre.

I also fear the possibility in pubs of getting caught up in talk about politics and football, both of these being war by other means and unsuitable for those of us who deplore confrontation and controversy.

However, Tim Martin, founder and chairman of Wetherspoon, embraces both and, as a Brexit enthusiast, has upped the ante by refusing to stock European swallies like Jägermeister, Courvoisier and Hennessy Fine de Cognac and replacing them with American and Australian brandies and an English herbal liqueur called Strika.

I’ve no experience of the latter but will say that its German equivalent, Jägermeister, should already have been banned by the European Union on mental health grounds.

Once, almost accidentally, the way you do (you know, you keep sipping something abstractedly until you’re comatose; come on, ye ken fine) I drank the best part of a bottle of this stuff. I can only compare the effect to Carlos Castaneda’s shamanistic experiences on peyote.

My brain was squashed flat then stretched out like pasta before being tied into little bows and presented to me on a platter along with a packet of Pringles by a pixie wearing a baseball cap with the words “Make Hamilton Accies great again” on it. Next day, I’d to put sign on my door saying, “Do not disturb – vomiting in progress”.

Mr Martin, for his part, vomits at the thought of the EU and has already removed French Champagne and German beers from the premises, again replacing these with UK or Australian equivalents, which he says are cheaper and came out better in blind tasting anyway.

His blind faith in Brexit, which extends to beer mats claiming a no-deal departure from the EU would lower prices, is explained by him thus: “In reality, there is no cliff edge, only sunlit uplands beyond the EU’s protectionist system of quotas and tariffs.”

Uplands? Sunlit? Reality? Glad we cleared that up. That said, I will not get involved in arguments about Europe. I’ve looked at Remain and Leave and find myself relieved that, with luck, there’ll be no second referendum. Such a lot of decision-making.

As for Mr Martin’s usually ill-advised mixing of commerce and politics, I doubt if it’ll do sales much harm. I personally decline on political grounds to buy certain brands of ice cream and teacakes, but cannot think it’s had much effect.

People get their Bawbags in a twist about “boycotts”, but it’s just an individual choice like preferring free range oven chips or organic lard.

Political hollering by businesses can come back to bite them on the bottom, though; vide John Lewis, prophets of doom in 2014, now seeing their profits tumble by 99 per cent. You can bet that, if the vote had gone the other way in 2014, that this and every other business setback would have been blamed on independence.

But we’re straying into politics and controversy here. I don’t know if I’ll be straying into a Wetherspoon pub any time soon. I might fancy trying a Milton Keynes wheat beer or a Newcastle Rosé Brut.

I’ll give the English herbal liqueur a miss, though.

Pity the poor people who joined the SNP post-referendum being told now that, on September 29, they will have to go out and knock on voters’ doors.

This used to be called canvassing, and it’s the worst job in the world. Never get involved with the public, readers. They really are the most peculiar people.

When I was younger, I canvassed for Labour – it used to be a political party in Scotland, children; now defunct – and found it a real eye-opener. The most disturbing thing back then was that people just parroted the front-pages of right-wing tabloids.

Today, given the deep insights we’ve had into people’s psyches from the mixed blessing of online comments, you’d need the courage of William Wallace – and a loan of his targe – to chap a door.

God knows the letters pages were always bad enough but imagine the door being opened by one of those loonie-tune yoons standing there in his Union Flag undies and clutching a pin-filled voodoo doll of Nicola Sturgeon.

Canvassing achieves nothing anyway. A lot of nutty nats I know would put you off voting for independence and shouldn’t be allowed near the public.

Apart from which, if I remember rightly, most “activists” only chap a few doors before feigning illness or nipping out of sight for a fly smoke or (these days) vape until the coast is clear.

The moral is clear, my friends: politics – like drinking, copulating and cycling – should only ever be carried out in the privacy of one’s own home.

In a surprise development, I’ve been sent a pair of big red pants. They’re not meant to symbolise derogatory comment but are in support of a good cause: raising money to fight prostate cancer.

Must say they’re top-drawer drawers and, with all profits going to Prostate Cancer UK, I fancy acquiring some more pairs.

Red’s rather racy for me, right enough, so I’ll only wear these in the house or garden (I prefer navy or grey when going out because of the likelihood of arrest or hospitalisation).

The red Bawbags bear the words “McEwan’s McNificent Man” and, given that a big brewer is behind the campaign, I’d hoped the pants might have contained a couple of wee heavies. However, nothing daunted, I’m doing my best to fill them with two garden peas and a cocktail sausage.