The monkeys invariably go mad looking for more and clamour all over the vehicle, terrifying the witless occupants.

I had a similar experience with primates of a different kind in Kilkenny recently. I didn't throw them titbits from the car window and there were no cameras around to record my abject fear, so the video clip will not be making it onto You've Been Framed anytime soon.

I needed to be in Kilkenny early in the morning so, having finished working in Dublin late in the evening, I headed off and found myself in the centre of Kilkenny city at half past one on Friday morning. I was driving through the city centre looking for my hotel when hordes of people suddenly came into view.

It was as though someone had unleashed some debilitating and noxious substance which rendered every person senseless, transforming them into a dribbling mess, unable to walk without bouncing off moving cars.

Those who gave up on their attempts to walk simply planted themselves on the ground. I neatly drove around the man who sat on the white line hugging a traffic cone and fleetingly worried for the girl who sat alone on the footpath with her legs stretching out into the path of the traffic. Having hit the central locking button and followed the slow procession of taxi drivers who carefully selected their fares, I hightailed it out of the city and into the safety of a hotel room with a locked door.

Thinking about it afterwards, I initially resigned myself to the fact that I am just getting old. At 31, am I already out of the loop when it comes to going out and having a good time? Perhaps I just don't remember what it's like to go out with the sole ambition of having loads of drinks and a great, uninhibited night. But I have already discounted this theory. Most of us, myself included, have plenty of experiences of wild nights out, where too much alcohol is the order of the day - after all, isn't it part of our cultural heritage to drink too much?

But even having taken this into account, I still can't help but be shocked by what I saw in Kilkenny that night. I have spoken to quite a few people since and a consensus on what is going on when it comes to Irish people and drunkenness has been slow to emerge.

Some say it's the type of drinks on offer. The sweet fizzy drinks that taste like lemonade are easy to consume and are high in alcohol content. There are more drinks on the market that younger drinkers find palatable and therefore can drink more of.

Others told me it was just as bad 10 or 15 years ago but, because we are older and wiser now, we find it hard to admit that we were once just as drunk as the party people of today. This I can't agree with. Of course people have always been capable of getting drunk and each generation can lay claim to having been wilder than the last, but I can honestly say that I have never seen the level of incoherent and widespread drunkenness that I witnessed as I drove through the streets of Kilkenny.

Last week a statistic emerged from the UK which may hold the key to this conundrum. The Information Centre for Health and Social Care has discovered that alcohol is 65% more affordable now than it was in 1985.

Although this figure relates to the UK, it is probably fair to assume that with our increased national wealth it is also the case here.

We have more money, it seems, than sense, and empty pockets no longer temper our national pastime.

The risks associated with drinking until your brain freezes over are well documented but the dangers have yet to filter through to those who continue to do it.

For this generation of party animals, 'enough' only comes when the bars shut up shop for the night and the inebriated safari monkeys are unleashed, unfettered and uninhibited, onto the unsuspecting streets.

Claire Byrne presents 'The Breakfast Show' with Ger Gilroy on Newstalk 106-108