rat-arsed

Which brings me to that other great Llandeilo tradition - everyone goes on an all-day Boxing Day bender and gets rat-arsed, staggering from pub to pub among the piles of steaming horse manure.

It was only when I was almost mown down by a silly little moped carrying seven rat-arsed students and a tricolor that the truth dawned on me.

If you're at one of these big Hogmanay parties in Edinburgh or Glasgow, chances are you'll be frozen stiff, rat-arsed and snogging the face off everyone around you.

These days it is acceptable for girls to do a pub-crawl, get rat-arsed and molest a few blokes along the way.

And so it came to pass that the Bishop of Southwark got monumentally rat-arsed after a Christmas party at the Irish Embassy in London, so drunk in fact that he climbed into the back of a Mercedes that wasn't his and started hurling the toys inside the car out of the window.

In an era when the slightest off-the-field misdemeanour is usually pounced upon by the press, was Freddie Flintoff really totally exonerated for turning up to meet the Prime Minister when completely rat-arsed (brilliant official explanation: "I'm struggling, to be honest") and made Sports Personality of the Year for his trouble?

Or he could have said drunk as a lord, drunk as a skunk, trollied, legless, mashed, mullered, blotto, out of my tree, rat-arsed, Brahms & Liszt, shedded, sozzled, rubbered, clobbered, wellied, pickled, inebriated, full of loud- mouth soup, squiffy, stinko, kaylied, off my head, newted, bombed, popped, sauced, wrecked or hooched.

These are the same kids you see if you walk down any main street on a Friday night and feel threatened by a mob of rat-arsed 12-year-olds smashing Buckie bottles against the walls or kicking hell out of some passer-by.

Casual Friday indeed, when the office workers dress down, get rat-arsed over a liquid lunch, and generally adopt the line that there's nothing that needs to be done that can't wait until Monday.

there's tar, too," because they can't admit to themselves that they simply like getting rat-arsed, so most anglers and hunters can't admit to themselves that their pleasure causes pain to others, and that "the thrill of the chase" is a very one-sided affair indeed.

And the reality is that in about two months' time, they'll be working in some bar in Greece, getting rat-arsed and telling anyone who will listen about their adventures in a Greek jail.

Anybody who enjoys what the Irish call "the craic", or what the rest of the world calls "getting rat-arsed", understands the humour involved.

He means: `We actually got rat-arsed in a lap-dancing club - now where did I stuff that Amber's knickers?'

But they had to get rat-arsed on the plane and ruin things for everyone.

And if he's man enough to get rat-arsed, smoke cannabis and go scrapping with photographers, then he's man enough to take responsibility for it.