MENTION alcopops and you are guaranteed to inflame TV presenter and Childline founder Esther Rantzen.

Just mention them and she is at her passionate, hard-hitting best.

"There is a lot of peer pressure and personally I would ban alcopops," she said firmly.

"I don't know how the companies who churn out these sweet alcoholic drinks to seduce children are getting away with it.

"I really do not know how they can sleep at night. If I had my way alcopops would be taken off the supermarket shelves and banned for good."

Esther, who celebrated the 20th anniversary of her free-phone counselling service for children last year, added: "We have a lot of calls linked to alcohol abuse.

"It has an effect on the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy and sex they were not ready for.

"Young people ring us up and say they really do not have any memory of what happened."

It was in the spring of 1986 that the BBC TV consumer programme That's Life!, presented by Esther, appealed to viewers for their help in conducting a survey on child abuse.

The BBC also ran a telephone helpline for 24 hours after the programme for adults and children.

The result was staggering.

Lines were jammed with children who insisted on remaining anonymous, but confided details of terrible cruelty and sexual abuse.

Three thousand adults (of whom 90 per cent were women) completed a BBC questionnaire, in which 90 per cent of them recounted, mostly for the first time, the experience of sexual abuse in their childhood.

As a result, a special Childwatch team was set up to read the questionnaires and make a programme on child abuse.

They found that children were still suffering as they had in the past.

The team met child care professionals from both the statutory and voluntary sectors - including the NSPCC, Kidscape, Great Ormond Street Hospital and social services departments - to discuss how to establish a permanent free telephone helpline, which would provide a way of comforting and advising those who could not be reached in any other way.

ChildLine was launched in October 1986 with a simple, memorable telephone number - 0800 1111.