'They Scream, They Sing, They Fall Down, They Take Their Clothes Off, They Cross-Dress, They Vomit'

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Enough with the Democratic Convention already.

While all that may well be going on in Denver (probably at any random CodePink event), that is actually the exasperated plea from the mayor of Malia, in Crete, where drunken British youth are running amok.

The mayor of Europe's latest 'party' destination has called on the UK Government to do something about the drunken, rowdy young Britons invading his town.

'They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,' said Konstantinos Lagoudakis, mayor of Malia in Crete. 'It is only the British people — not the Germans or the French.'

The town has fallen prey to the curse of the package tour, like Ayia Napa in Cyprus, Faliraki in Greece and others before it.

'The government of Britain has to do something,' said Mr Lagoudakis. 'These people are giving a bad name to their country.'

The fact that the mayor's comments appeared in the New York Times will only underline the impression that he is right.

They come in the wake of a Foreign Office report which said 602 Britons had been hospitalised and 28 raped in Greece alone in 2006/07, with the number of UK citizens arrested in foreign resorts up by more than 15 per cent to 4,603.

'Many arrests are due to behaviour caused by excessive drinking,' the Foreign Office report added.

Malia hit the headlines last month after 20-year-old Briton Leah Andrews was accused of strangling her newborn child in her hotel room. She is now in custody charged with infanticide.

The residents, hoteliers and traders are so frustrated by the deterioration of their town that last year they held an anti-British demonstration. Now the main tourist strip is patrolled by 20 police officers who break up fights and make arrests.

Lovely.