WHEN I first came to Bournemouth in the late 1970s I was surprised by the town's drinking culture. There seemed to be too few bars in the town centre.

I had moved from a village, near Manchester, that boasted 19 pubs. Close to Bournemouth Square, by comparison, there were a few, such as the Criterion and the Fox but not many at all.

Nowadays, Bournemouth has changed and the centre has more bars than Wormwood Scrubs.

A tourist guide has even branded it "a nation's drinking problem personified".

But the headache is not just Bourne- mouth's, it is Britain's. And you can't just blame it on young people. It's a hangover from generations past. Our culture has always been one where people have fuelled nights out with buckets of alcohol. (And, remember, before the breathalyser, many people would then drive home.) But today, Bournemouth's lively but liquid culture doesn't go down a treat with all British people, to say the least.

And so yesterday, we asked some foreign students what they thought of our boozy partying ways. They made charming remarks about our town but it was apparent that, for many, heavy drinking on a fun night-out was strange.

Most of the foreign students we chatted to came from cultures where it is normal to have a drink or two but not five, six, seven or eight. They are used to people drinking responsibly. Many of us are not.

Is Bournemouth a better place now than it was 30 years ago? Could Bournemouth centre ever return to the days when pubs were rare? I suspect time has been called on the clock ever going back.

But they said that about the perm.