Virginia Blackburn

FROM the mouths of babes and the Vicar of Dibley. In an interview over the weekend Dawn French waded in with some pretty succinct home truths about the generation of ladettes currently behaving far, far more badly than their male counterparts ever used to do. “I am shocked,” said Dawn. “These girls are preloading with vodka… they go out and get utterly hammered and are s **** ing in a bush and coming out and going, ‘Yes!’ like men. Like the men we hoped we’d never be like.” Well said.

One of the most depressing aspects of modern life is the way so many young women confuse equal opportunities with the right to behave like an alley cat on heat. A generation ago if the female of the species routinely got so drunk she couldn’t remember her own name and then had sex with complete strangers, society would have shuddered – and that was a good thing.

No one wants to return to the mores of the Victorian age but we Brits are considerably more brutish at heart than our buttoned-up image suggests and the disapproval of peers helped keep us in order. But now? Go to any city centre after 10pm and you’re confronted with scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in Sodom and Gomorrah. We’re told that the younger generation is drinking less these days: well it certainly doesn’t look that way come nightfall in some parts of town.

And for what? No one in their right mind could possibly claim that these drunken, rutting young men and women are getting any possible satisfaction from their lifestyle. For a start, what’s the point of making the beast with two backs with anyone at all if you can’t even remember it the next day? What about the health risks? Any sense of pride? And some of these women end up feeling so