When former Sun editor David Yelland wrote a children’s book about an alcoholic, he had to come clean about his own drinking problem. The ex- Northern Echo reporter tells Steve Pratt about his son’s reaction and what others can learn from his story.

EVEN now, David Yelland finds it jarring when he sees a headline linking the word Yelland and alcoholic.

There have been quite a few such articles of late, as the former editor of The Sun has provided the media with details of his own story, one that wouldn’t seem out of place in the pages of any tabloid.

After writing a children’s book about an alcoholic father raising his son following his wife’s death, he came out as a recovering alcoholic who’d drunk four bottles of wine a day while editing the country’s top national tabloid newspaper.

Harrogate-born Yelland – a former reporter on The Northern Echo at a time he was “on the nursery slopes of alcoholism” – didn’t plan it that way. He simply knew there’d be no hiding after publication of The Truth About Leo. “I realised I had crossed the Rubicon and there was no way I could publish the book without being very honest,” he says.

He makes clear the father in the book isn’t him, apart from the alcoholism. He’s a doctor, not a journalist, and, unlike the fictional Leo, his own son, Max, now 11, never saw him drunk.

The book exposes what he sees as one of the last taboos – children and a parent with a drink problem.

“The response has been astonishing. There are millions of people affected by this. I expected it to be controversial, but it’s not at all.

But has given a voice to millions of children who have seen this.”

He speaks of the desire to help others, with the zeal of a recovering alcoholic anxious to make amends. Five years editing The Sun has given him a unique insight into how the media, and indeed the country, works.

Coupled with his “inside knowledge” of alcoholism, he knew that what he was saying in the book would resonate and his background gave him the knowledge to get publicity. But it would only work if he was completely honest, which he feels he has been.

“A lot of people said I might not need to be so honest,” he says. “But recovery worked.

There are millions in recovery around the world, including in the North-East. It would be better if it was more acceptable to be in recovery and less acceptable to be drunk around your children.

“At the moment, people equate alcoholism with drinking alcohol. I know people who drink a lot but aren’t alcoholics, although they aren’t very healthy. It doesn’t mean because you get p****d a lot you’re an alcoholic.

“Most people can drink. I wish I could have a few pints, have a laugh and go to bed. There are people who are born addicted to alcohol and I’m one of them. I was very lucky in my drinking career. I had a low capacity. If I had a high capacity I’d be dead.”

A lot was what he calls “lap of honour drinking”, explaining: “You’d write your column, or edit the paper, and drinking would be a celebration.

I didn’t misbehave when I was drunk, I’d fall asleep. The telltale signs of alcoholism are when you’re doing things that are costing more than money, that are costing relationships.”

The character of the single father is another echo of his own situation. His wife, Tania, died of breast cancer two years after they divorced in 2004. Yelland checked into rehab for alcoholism in 2005.

“Max has read the book and doesn’t equate the father with me in any way. I haven’t drunk for five years. I was divorced most of the time I was drinking, so he’s not seen me drunk. But he likes the book because Leo’s mother is modelled on Tania and it brings his mum back to life in a very nice way.”

He’s determined to bring the subject of alcoholism and children into the open.

“I live in the world of recovery a lot of the time. Some are famous, some are ordinary people.

The most important point I am trying to make, and Leo understands, is that recovery is a wonderful thing.

“We just accept, as a country, that a huge proportion of the population is drunk on a Friday night. I’m not saying I can change anyone’s behaviour. It’s just a bit odd that our children see us bit squiffy and it scares them.

“I went into rehab when I was 42. If I’d known about it, if I’d have gone in when I was 32. It might have saved my marriage.”

He wrote The Truth About Leo without a publishing deal, aware that people’s response would have been along the lines of “there’s no way you can put a book about alcoholism in the kids’ section of Waterstone’s,” he says.

HOW much the pressure of editing The Sun contributed to his drinking is debatable but, in retrospect, he feels he was the wrong person for the job. Certainly, he was happier living in the North-East and working in the Stanley office of The Northern Echo, in what he calls it a “very magical time”.

He’s now part of a London-based PR consultancy firm. Away from work, he spends a lot of time trying to help other people “not because I’m a saint, but because I have learnt the best way to help yourself is to help others,” he says.

“I know it’s a cliche, but I’ve met lot of people who’ve made a lot of money but I wouldn’t say they are happier than those without money. A lot of celebrities and people we’re supposed to look up to are pretty awful. The really great people are those who live next door or over the road.

“We’ve lost that value. People say, ‘you were editor of The Sun’ but because of that I saw the dark side of how Britain works. I spent five years at the apex of that.”

■ The Truth About Leo (Penguin, £6.99)