We’re the party people

Let’s start with the French. The first thing that strikes any Anglo observer of French nightlife is that the age-old insult “the English take their pleasures sadly” (coined by an 18th-century French aristocrat) could now be applied to the French. Walk into a bar in Menton and the first thing that hits you is the hush. There may be a television on, but it is turned down low and nobody is really watching.

The pub “chatter” is desultory and rather devoid of laughter. Contrast that with an English pub, where the jukebox is drowned out by catcalls, breaking glass and whoops of delight as someone gets their nipples out.

Of course, a small-town French boozer can’t be compared with, say, a boisterous theme pub in Manchester, but even the “happening” French bars are considerably quieter than an average British pub at the weekend.

I remember a few years ago when I went to the Cannes film festival and asked a French journalist where all the buzzy French media types went at night. “The British bar,” he replied. “That’s where the fun is.”

And yet, and yet. We should remember that pub culture is, by definition, a British speciality. What the French really do is restaurants and cafés. And it’s true that on the Riviera these places are more animated than the bars. But there still seems something joyless about the modern French restaurant ambience.

Judging by the faces in Menton, what the French like to do at night is to go to a nice restaurant — and have a good scowl. That’s what they do: they scowl and sip tiny glasses of stuff while turning their lips down. This sourness is all the more amazing when you consider how cheap and delicious their food is, how good and unpricey the wine, how great the weather, how warm the nearby sea.

What about the Italians? Are they any different? The vibrant entrepôt of Ventimiglia is only a few minutes down a beautiful railway line from Menton. An evening there shows that when the Italians step out they are, on the face of it, cheerier than the French. They smile more, talk more, they are noisy and extrovert. They look, in fact, like us after we’ve had a few.

But these Italians aren’t drunk. They don’t really drink, not to distraction and falling-overness, à l’Anglais. What they like to do is walk: they stroll about admiring each other’s trousers; they amble around licking fine gelati. This is pleasurable, but for an up-for-it Brit it’s also a little . . . pointless. After you’ve had your seventh tutti-frutti, you start thinking — OK, that was nice, now I want to go out. At this point the Italians want to go home.

As for the other nationalities in Menton, on the whole they also bear out the survey’s findings. The Finns and Scandinavians spend the evening doing press-ups (the Nordics’ favourite form of entertainment is sport, apparently). Meanwhile, the Spanish are often to be seen in Menton’s “plein air” cinema (they are Europe’s biggest cinemagoers), while the Germans (of which there must be many, judging by their number plates everywhere) don’t seem to venture from their hotels after dark (which tallies with the WSJ’s finding that the Germans are the biggest stayerinners in Europe). As for the Austrians, well, I’ve seen only one. Which makes sense, as the WSJ found that an Austrian’s favourite entertainment is sitting in his Salzburg apartment not spending any euros (the Austrians dedicate the least cash to entertainment).

All this raises a big question: how have we turned into the party monsters? It’s not that long since a Briton was regarded, in terms of sociability, as “two pints behind everybody else” (ie, socially crippled by reserve).

Similarly, recall how, in Down And Out In Paris And London, George Orwell compared the buzz and joie de vivre of 1930s Paris with the somnolent streets of prewar London (“sleeping the deep sleep of England”). In 50 years we have become top-drawer razzle-dazzlers — from being, frankly, complete party-poopers.

My theory is that we British are now reverting to type. Long before we were known for our reserve, we were notorious for drunken boisterousness. In the 16th century England was “Merrie England”, a place where foreign visitors would remark on the free and easy manners of the locals, and the anarchy of the streets.

Likewise, glance at any of Hogarth’s prints of 18th-century London, such as Morning, and you will see that Covent Garden was the kind of place where gin-soaked nobs would brawl drunkenly in bars. At 8am. This Covent Garden is again recognisable today.

How did we become respectable and boring? Perhaps it was the Empire, a need to impress conquered natives by staying in emotional control. Perhaps it was also a result of the bourgeoisification of the Victorian era, when increasingly rigid class structures meant that you had to behave “better” than your social inferiors — or risk being mistaken for them.

This makes sense: now that the Empire has gone and class structures are almost meaningless, we can revert to our true selves: hedonistic, aggressive, ribald and given to drinking too many Bacardi Breezers.

Some will deplore this decline. They would hark back to Victorian times, when we were the uptight prefects of the world. But these people should remember when it was that we actually won that empire: in 1759 we sank the French fleet in Europe and Africa, defeated our enemies in Canada, took half the islands of the Caribbean and gained a hold on India.It was also the height of the London gin-and-gambling craze — when we all went out a lot.