The last Ashes were better

I heard the Ashes celebrations were muted this time round. How come? asked DF van der Weide from South Africa
When you've pissed in the bushes at 10 Downing Street and called the Prime Minister a knob and been rewarded with an MBE for your troubles, you've climbed the Mount Everest of celebrations. It's downhill from there. Really, what could Andrew Strauss and the boys have done? Scaled a wall at Buckingham Palace, popped into the queen's bedroom and asked her for a light? Wait, that's been done too, apparently. Oh those anti-authoritarian, fun-loving Brits.

So no MBEs (except for Bilal Shafayat and the team physio, who got theirs in a secret ceremony, for the small matter of actually winning the Ashes). And no drunken prat-like cavorting atop open-top buses in Trafalgar Square. In fact, so muted have the celebrations been that there was a mere five-hour drinking binge after the game, which as any fool knows does not honour the word "binge". Why, Australian cricketers have had their throats grabbed for daring to call an end to parties that have gone on for longer than that.

A look at the facts and stats involved will immediately reveal just how unbecomingly wimpy this alleged celebration was. Firstly, the Ashes winners and 40 guests (that's right, a mere 40 - what would Caligula have said?) tucked into a buffet of chicken, salmon and fruit salad (that's right, white meat - the choice of discerning hellraisers everywhere).

Sixty boxes of Corona were used during the night. That's right, a full 60, or about as much as David Boon used to get through himself on the flight to England in the old days.

Andrew Flintoff left at 1am, saying, "I'm too old to party. I'm done." He added, in a manner fit to make professional carousers worldwide proud, "I'll take my wife out for lunch tomorrow and see my family."

Graeme Swann revealed, on Twitter - that tool of notorious party boys everywhere - the next day that he had horrendous reflux, making one long for the days of real men, when the post-match revelry involved black eyes, broken bones and missing limbs, at the very least.

If we don't watch out, at this rate we'll soon be back to the oldest days of them all, when the fall of a wicket used to bring forth no more than a small snarl from the bowler and rough handshakes with any fielders who happened to be in the vicinity. Now those were real men.