Kerre Woodham: Girls just gotta have fun, but why be such drunkards?

I see that Christchurch Hospital is reporting a huge increase in the numbers of women who have been admitted to A and E as a result of their drinking.

Falls and alcoholic poisoning appear to be the main reasons for the admissions. There must be a heck of a lot of women going whoopsie because numbers have jumped from 133 in 2000 to 248 last year.

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I'm a former heavy drinker myself and last year I did a television programme on the reasons women drink. The answer seems to be because we can.

It's socially acceptable for women to drink now. There are cafés on every street where women can become spectacularly uncivilised in very civilised surroundings. We have more money and it's our own. We don't have to slide a few bucks from the housekeeping money to buy our gin. And we're also working alongside the blokes, so after-work drinks become part of the job.

It's also a great way for girls to lose their inhibitions, as many a bloke has found to his benefit late in the evening in a bar. Beer goggles work both ways, and if fewer women drank, fewer men would be shagged.

As with men, women are going to have to learn the hard way that too much of a good thing can be very bad indeed. I gave the booze away when I realised I was turning into the woman I used to despise serving when I worked as a maitre d'.

Say what you like but feminist theory has had no effect on alcohol. Women can't drink as much as men and they look a whole lot worse - when drunk - than the boys do. Slack faces, make-up smeared, skirts hoiked up and thick thighs splayed as they leer at young waiters - pissed old boilers are seriously unlovely to the sober observer.

Still, if you're one of the "POBs", you're having a ball, and for a while, the fun and frivolity is worth the fall-out from a bender.

Besides, most of us moderate our drinking as we get older. It seems to be a natural part of ageing.

But for those who don't, it would be nice to see the liquor industry putting a fraction of the money it leeches from the public into facilities to help the minority who suffer as a result of the drug. Seems only fair.