Well Lizzie, we can agree about Paris Hilton – and the same goes for the myriad of other so-called celebrities who inhabit that strange twilight world of Hello magazine. The phrase 'get a life' was never more apt, both for them and the people who follow their inane antics.

As to the drinking culture – well, I wonder if it hasn't always been that way, to some extent. Over 100 years ago A E Housman wrote, in 'A Shropshire Lad':

Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.


It has an uncannily familiar ring.... now where did I leave my tie (oh that's right, I don't own one!)