If there is one prediction I can confidently make about the Brown family's holiday in Suffolk (good choice!), it is that whatever the stresses they have undergone lately they will not spend their days drinking heavily, swaggering around topless, breaking windows, defacing monuments or performing indecent acts on the beach. Nor are they likely to lie in the sun drunk until their skin falls off, forget they've got children, or attempt watersports while too bladdered to stand up.

From Tallinn to Torremolinos, however, a sizeable number of their compatriots will do just that. It is unfair to say that only the British behave badly on holiday - clock those French schoolchildren in national museums, or the polyglot hordes of shoving, shrieking can-sucking teenagers now impeding hot, cross Londoners. But we certainly seem to be among the world leaders in mayhem.

The Foreign Office has just launched another of its slightly desperate crusades to prevent rapes among young holidaymakers in Greece: I say “among” because it seems that most British victims of sexual assault there accuse fellow UK holidaymakers. Mayor Ioannis Iatrides in Faliraki sees a silver lining in the rise of the euro against sterling: “Mercifully our clientele this summer is a wonderful mix of people from all over Europe... far fewer Britons, which means no rapes, no accidents, no drunken debauchery, no going on the rampage. I'm so relieved.” Meanwhile, in Crete last week a supermarket owner was beaten up by six British men for asking them to slow down their quad-bikes, and on Corfu four others were charged with gang rape. A teenage boy has died on Zakynthos, apparently drunk, and 15 English tourists were charged with indecency after - so it is reported - “an open-air oral sex contest”. In Prague the embassy staff are accustomed to being woken at night by calls from the incapable, one recently turning up at the embassy wearing only a bedsheet.

The FO produces no figures from the Baltic, but exploration of the local press reveals that in early summer this year a 32-year-old British man was arrested in Riga roaming naked through the Old Town, others urinated on the National Monument and two Irishmen were taken in custody after one tried to take photographs of the other's naked bottom. The Baltic Times says sadly: “The English used to have a reputation for being gentlemen, now it seems they and their compatriots from the isles in the Northern Atlantic have gained a reputation for being what the Interior Minister Marks Seglins called ‘pigs'.” Asked by the newspaper why they relieved themselves on the monument, Londoners explained that public urination “is a part of their society”. Latvia is getting tough: last autumn one Briton was banned from going home until his case was heard and his fine paid, another got five days prison.

Over one recent year the Foreign Office records that 3,292 Britons were arrested abroad and more than 9,000 others lost their passports. Older travellers are fingered too: another sorrowful FO warning is about over-55s making OAP stand for “Overseas and Plastered” . While we clearly can't compete with the young on a level basis, we do apparently tend to ride mopeds while incapable. Nor does it stop on the plane home: last week two British women old enough to know better caused an emergency landing when they attempted to open a door at 30,000 feet shouting “I need some fresh air”, and swinging a vodka bottle at the cabin crew. Even expatriate professionals can fall prey to the effect of a hot day off: witness the two daft Brits who concluded a Friday brunch in Dubai by allegedly having sex on the beach, ignoring cautions and assaulting the police. It may land them six years in prison.

This is not another rant about yob culture or binge drinking: that goes without saying. I am simply fascinated by the phenomenon of holiday excesses and holiday spirit , ever since for three years as a small child I lived full-time in Walberswick. We had a pretty good life, but every summer we village schoolchildren would look with envious admiration at the “holidaymakers”. They seemed another breed: curiously carefree, even walking and talking differently. They sauntered, they sat for hours doing nothing , they wore strange clothing and looked around them with innocent, wondering eyes. They yawned a lot, but not from boredom: more of a cowlike contentment, a sense of peaceful invulnerability which we residents could not quite share. Even in the rain, peer into the holiday cottages and you'd see them playing Scrabble or chatting drink in hand, as if there was no such thing in the universe as work, or worry, or loose guttering, or blocked sinks.

I have watched this ever since, in many countries. People slow down mentally as well as physically; in West Country villages they walk in the middle of the road because surely cars can't knock you down if you're on holiday? In hot lands they drink and burn and walk through the public street undressed, because in their heads they have sweetly banished sickness and evil and crime and censure and social obligation. Holidaymakers snatch, unthinking as little children, at any passing pleasure. At one end of the scale it is no more than an overpriced choc-ice, unwise karaoke moment, doomed watercolour lesson or third go on the roundabout. At the other end of the scale it is recklessness, outrage, violence, rape.

And of course there is no moral equivalence. But there is a psychological parallel, and at root it is not an unattractive spirit. We all need to get out sometimes - escaping not only our familiar setting but ourselves, our responsible dull quotidian personae. As David Cameron said to Barack Obama yesterday: “You should be on the beach. You need a break. You need to be able to keep your head together.” Quite right. But keeping your head together entails just briefly letting it all go: at the start of a good holiday a switch is thrown in our heads and hearts. Once again, as when we were small, we believe that magic can happen, that we can be different, that life is not just a predictable and frequently humiliating shamble towards the grave. It is a feeling that we need.

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