IT’S official: the Foreign Office says that when young Britons travel abroad they are not aiming to experience other cultures so much as to get drunk, have sex and even pick a fight.

Civil servants have quantified for the first time how many Britons go abroad to “party hard and do things to excess” — and identified the regions with the worst culprits.

While the most cultured hail from southwest England, the most lively, drug-crazed and sexually voracious come from the West Midlands.

The previously unpublished research, which runs to 79 pages and cost the taxpayer more than £50,000, was released under the Freedom of Information Act. It shows that more than a third of Britons aged between 16 and 30 believe that holidays are purely about hedonism. Of those, 75% said they wanted to drink to excess, 28% wanted a one-night stand, 8% wanted to take drugs and 5% wanted a fight.

Project Holiday details the anti-social and often dangerous behaviour of young people while abroad — including the practice of “swimming while drunk” enjoyed by 24% of the party crowd.

The study suggests that West Midlanders have become “modern Vikings”, wreaking havoc across the globe. Nearly 30% say they go on holiday seeking sex compared with a national figure of just 15%, and 13% say they want to take drugs against an average of 4%.

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