What we old fogeys call bad behaviour is on the increase.

In my day bad behaviour was shouting a bit, stealing street signs, letting off fireworks, being cheeky. Feeble stuff compared with today's bad behaviour, which is getting badder and badder.

You wouldn't think that theatres would be a hotbed of rowdiness, but reported recently are drunken barracking and singing, and even a case of a member of the audience relieving himself at the side of the stage.

Mobiles ring, and the owners answer, they send texts, couples fondle each other in the stalls. Or take cricket, where you'd expect far more restrained behaviour than at a football match.

But no, cricket fans are getting louder, rougher and nastier, and again the usual cause is drink.

But for mega bad behaviour you have to go to Prague or Riga or Budapest or Krakow – all magnets for the British stag parties who drink themselves senseless, insult the natives, run about with no clothes on and start fights.

It's not easy to shock people at home any more, they reason, so let's go abroad and shock the natives.

These cities need tourists to boost their economies, but the stag parties from Britain are discouraging decently behaved people from visiting. Take Riga, where their revered and iconic national monuments to freedom are regularly peed on, damaged or climbed on by naked roaring British drunks. They hate it but they need the business, but even so they are planning a crackdown.

The common denominator wherever you find Brits behaving badly, here or abroad, is of course booze, which is so cheap, so easy to buy, and so easy to drink wherever you like. Why not go into a foreign cathedral and sing and dance and urinate on the wall – it's only a bit o' fun, innit?

It's a peculiarly British problem, because only Brits drink solely

in order to get drunk and go wild, and theatre bosses who let audiences drink in the auditorium, sporting event organisers who sell alcohol freely, airlines which supply booze in flight and travel agencies which organise cheap stag and party trips abroad are largely to blame for our shaming world reputation for bad, bad behaviour.