I GOT through the whole of my childhood drinking water from the tap, and when I went camping, straight from the stream.

I got the occasional stomach upset from a teenage excess of liquor, or bad whelks from Southend, but never ever from the water.

Moreover, I had no idea that perfectly sane folk would pay good money to buy bottles of stuff that they could get from the tap for free.

I can still remember my amazement at discovering on my first trip to France, aged 18, that the French mainly drank bottled water.

But my companion on that trip had a convincing explanation for that: a) they were French; b) French plumbing was atrocious and its public water supply not to be trusted.

Not like us, in other words.

Now we're the same as everyone else, consuming billions of bottles of water when the same stuff, and just as safe if not safer, is available at a price 1,000 times less from a fantastically convenient source called a domestic water supply.

Imagine for a moment (and put aside the obvious incendiary hazards) if there were two ways to get the petrol for your car.

Either from a tap in the garage adjoining your house at a fraction of pence per litre or in a fancy bottle with some "special" (but useless) additives from the supermarket at over £1 per litre?

Would any of us be daft enough to go and buy the bottled petrol at the supermarket just because the packaging and advertising said it was "better"? Of course not.

For safety (and other) reasons a petrol pump in every house is a fantasy.

But the comparison is not. Why are we consumers such suckers? Yes I've been one of them.

But I do my bit in the restaurant to insist on tap water.

(I do spend 50p twice a week on a bottle of water in the gym, as I like the people and it's relatively cheap) and occasionally, if desperate elsewhere, I'll buy a bottle.

Otherwise it is the tap. East Lancashire water has long been good and London water has got a lot better.

I'd been mulling over my concerns about bottled water for some time, I finally decided to say something, after a stop at a motorway service station on the way back from a Rovers game a couple of weeks ago.

I needed a litre of milk. It was pricey by comparison with the supermarkets but still only 89p.

The car needed petrol at 94p per litre. I fancied a slug of water.

Row upon rows of bottles - £1.69 a litre and rising. I found a tap.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has concluded that bottled water does not have greater nutritional value than tap water.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate said that "from a health point of view there's absolutely no difference between bottled water and tap water".

Taste is a subjective matter but try blind tasting between bottled and tap. You may be surprised.

As long as there is a bottled water industry, I want to see as much as possible produced by domestic suppliers.

This is partly patriotism, partly common sense.

For there is a big environmental aspect to this.

The Independent newspaper claimed that the 28 billion litres of bottled water delivered to American consumers required fuel equivalent to that for 100,000 cars for a year.

Tap is cheaper, quicker, and easier. Do your bit for the planet - and use it.