Good cheer as booze crackdown fails to dent punters' party

Booze and the Cheltenham Festival go together like turkey and Christmas (or booze and Christmas, or booze and more booze) but apparently some racegoers last year expressed concern about over-enthusiastic revelry – heaven forfend! – which reached such a fever pitch of scandal that two reality TV 'stars' bared their breasts from the balcony of a hospitality box.

Clearly, something had to be done before things got totally out of control, and lo, something was done: last month track chiefs announced they would be instituting perhaps the most draconian alcohol clampdown since prohibition, decreeing bars would shut early and punters would be strictly limited to four pints a go.

And so, in an important piece of consumer testing your correspondent, ably assisted by four colleagues dragged kicking and screaming from their laptops, attempts to buy five pints in a single round from a bar at Cheltenham.