Ellie Levenson: So what if the young go on holiday for sex?

Perhaps I'm jealous at feeling compelled to say I spent my holiday trekking through the jungle

The Foreign Office, clearly not busy enough with Iraq, preparations for the G8, and the wrath of much of the European Union, has commissioned research looking at why Britons aged 16 to 30 go on holiday. The 79-page study, released under the Freedom of Information Act, found that 75 per cent said they wanted to drink to excess, 28 per cent wanted a one-night stand, 8 per cent wanted to take drugs and 5 per cent wanted a fight. Presumably not all at the same time.

The Foreign Office, clearly not busy enough with Iraq, preparations for the G8, and the wrath of much of the European Union, has commissioned research looking at why Britons aged 16 to 30 go on holiday. The 79-page study, released under the Freedom of Information Act, found that 75 per cent said they wanted to drink to excess, 28 per cent wanted a one-night stand, 8 per cent wanted to take drugs and 5 per cent wanted a fight. Presumably not all at the same time.

The civil servants' research found that many go on holiday, not as we previously imagined, to experience other cultures, but to 'party hard and do things to excess'. The holidaymakers that is, not the civil servants, though it is fair to assume that civil servants go on holiday too and therefore may drink, have holiday romances, get high and have a fight as much as the next person.

Anyway, their research also shows that one of the primary activities of young holidaymakers, besides clubbing or seeking sex, is to go swimming when drunk, something a quarter of respondents admitted to. My holiday paranoia comes out here and I hope they count themselves lucky the next day, when sober, they realise that they didn't get eaten by sharks. Confusingly, sharking is what we used to call being out on the pull which now seems to be known as "I usually end up doing stupid things but it doesn't matter because it's all part of enjoying myself", a statement that a third of those surveyed agreed with.

What I find sad about the Foreign Office's report is not so much that young Britons are behaving yobbishly abroad, but that their exploits don't really constitute a holiday. As one respondent to the survey said, it's "just an extended version of what we get up to at home". Which means they don't get what I would see as the main advantage of a holiday - having a change of lifestyle and a rest. Surely, if you're busy "happy-slapping" and drinking alcopops all year round, you could do with a break from this on your holiday? To do the same abroad as you do at home is called a "home-plus" holiday - everything you get at home (English breakfasts, English beer, English newspapers) plus one or two extras such as sunshine, or sex.

Mind you, perhaps it's not disapproval that I feel here, but a tinge of jealousy at not being able to get away with this kind of behaviour and instead feeling compelled to be able to say "yes, I spent my holiday trekking through the jungle, rebuilding a village school and visiting ancient ruins". After all, some hassle-free sex and a cocktail too many somewhere sunny sounds rather attractive to me, especially if followed by a plate of chips and a game of Sudoku in a two-day-old copy of The Independent. The fights, on the other hand, I can do without; it's far cheaper just to catch the bus to my local B&Q on a Saturday afternoon if I fancy coming to blows with a local thug.

But as well as the jealousy, is there not also an element of snobbery about the headlines this study has generated? We disapprove of these exploits when they take place in cheap resorts, but is that just because we disapprove of the type of people who go on package tours to these places? I don't have the statistics, though will perhaps put in a request for it myself to the Foreign Office under the Freedom of Information Act, but I bet posh kids do exactly the same in other resorts.

They however are lucky enough to keep it relatively secret beyond the locked gates of private villas in the Caribbean. They certainly do it when they holiday in the UK; residents of Rock in Cornwall are so incensed by the anti-social behaviour of young, primarily public school, visitors, drinking too much, being violent and rampaging down the streets, that they are applying for anti-social behaviour orders and dispersal orders to cover the beach area at night. Change Rock to Faliraki and polo shirts to football strips, and the headlines could be the same.

Perhaps, however, the more privileged young people are wise enough to realise that the headlines do them no favours, and are sensible enough not to answer surveys on their return: "Hello, young sir, I'm conducting a survey, can I just ask you whether you went on holiday to take drugs?" "Bugger off, the chauffeur is waiting and you're blocking the porter carrying my luggage." Or another possibility: "Hello, young sir, can I just ask you whether you went on holiday to pick a fight? Ouch! Awfully sorry, Prince Harry, I didn't recognise you with that tan."

For those who are neither jealous, nor snobbish about other people's holiday hedonism, but just don't share the same idea of 'fun' as those surveyed, there is an upside to all of this. The research shows that 20 per cent of East Anglian holidaymakers go abroad wanting a fight (compared to a 5 per cent national average). This means, in peak holiday season, when the youth of East Anglia are picking fights on the Aegean, the rest of us can head off on trouble-free mini breaks in the UK. Norfolk Broads this year anyone?