13:55

One of the most popular and occasionally unusual events in Brighton has just taken place. Part of Momentum side-festival The World Transformed it saw shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth chatting to Russell Brand, the comedian and actor, who was likely to have been largely responsible for the queues around the block.

The pair were discussing addiction and the responses to it, a subject both have a personal stake in. Brand has talked and written publicly and often about his addictions, while Ashworth talked late last year about growing up with a father who struggled with alcoholism.

In moving opening address, Ashworth described growing up with his father, who died seven years ago, and the lack of help he got as a child.

That drinking was always there, and coloured my life. It was not unusual for me to go home, open the fridge, and find nothing but bottles of wine, cans of lager. It was not unusual to be picked up from school as.a ten-year-old and my dad was drunk.

Around 2m children are currently growing up with an alcoholic parent, Ashworth said, promising that if Labour took power he would seek to provide more help on the issue. “We’ve got to treat is as a public health issue as well,” he said.

Brand - who not long ago advocated people did not vote, but is now a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn – also argued for a more coherent policy on addiction, saying that while he was very aware of the dangers of drugs he felt they should be decriminalised and “regulated”.

Brand also spoke about what he said was the “social” factors pushing addiction. “There is a pathological element to addiction, it is a disease. There’s people that seem to have more of a propensity towards it. But there is also a social component to it,” he said.