Brits behaving badly

Have you ever looked around on South Beach on a weekend and wondered how so many drunks can fit on such a small island?

Well, we're not alone. The Greek Islands have become the Mediterranean equivalent of South Beach for rowdy British tourists.

A report in The New York Times today reveals that vast numbers of British citizens on holiday are rapidly wearing out their welcome in some European countries including Greece.

And judging from a British Foreign Office report titled “British Behavior Abroad” that's quoted in The Times story, the favorite pastimes of vacationing British citizens are, in no particular order:

Drinking

Puking

Getting arrested

and Dying...yes, dying!

and more drinking

The report says that 1,591 British tourists died in Spain from April 2006 to March 2007. During the same period 2,032 Brits were arrested.

The mayor of Malia, Greece, Konstantinos Lagoudakis, succinctly sums up the behavior of British tourists like this: "They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit."

American tourists are also helping to keep Spanish jails filled up. They came in at No. 2, behind the UK with 1,415 arrests.

And this TIME Magazine story says that in 2007 60% of the Brits returning from Mallorca, Spain reported that they'd been drunk on at least five days of their one-week holiday. Nice!

So what's at the root of all this debauchery?

One Brit told The Times: “We have stressful jobs, and we don’t get much time off, and we like to enjoy ourselves and have a good laugh. And we love a bargain.”

Who says those stuffy Brits don't know how to have fun?