Tony Blair used alcohol as 'a prop' to cope with pressures of life in No 10

London, Sept 1 (ANI): Former British PM Tony Blair has admitted that he used alcohol as "a prop" to cope with the pressures of life in No 10.

The bombshell revelation comes in his 700-page autobiography, A Journey, which took three years to write and goes on sale today, reports the Sun.

The book gives a fascinating insight into his life as PM.

He says he would often hit the spirits before moving on to wine at the end of a hard day and admits that his intake was at "the outer limit".

"The relationship between alcohol and Prime Ministers is a subject for a book all on its own," Blair, 57 said.

"By the standards of days gone by I was not even remotely a toper, and I couldn't do lunchtime drinking except on Christmas Day, but if you took the thing everyone always lied about - units per week - I was definitely at the outer limit.

"Stiff whisky or a G and T before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it. So not excessively excessive.

"I had a limit. But I was aware it had become a prop." He adds: "I could never work out whether for me it was, on balance a) good, because it did relax me or b) bad, because I could have been working rather than relaxing.

"I came to the conclusion - conveniently you might think - that a) beat b).

"I thought that escaping the pressure and relaxing was a vital part of keeping the job in proportion, a function rather like my holidays.

"I believed I was in control of the alcohol. However you have to be honest: it's a drug, there's no getting away from it," he added. (ANI)