This story from last week kind of puts the Mummers Parade into perspective:

Scores of professionals are being treated for the after-effects of excessive drinking at a field hospital set up in the centre of London.

Last night 11 people were treated by ambulance service paramedics at a stretcher tent inside Liverpool Street station as part of Operation Mitre.

The figure is expected to rise tonight as workers celebrate the start of their Christmas break.

The field hospital was set up to keep NHS beds free for more important cases. The hospital opened as a survey found that the over-thirties are worse binge drinkers than teenagers and twenty-somethings.

Last night paramedics battled with the consequences of Christmas celebrations.

A green tent on platform 10 is served by three ambulances and a fast response car. A team of 15 including paramedic and emergency technician crews work until 4am, responding to all alcohol-related calls in the area.

The 180 bars and pubs in EC1 and EC2 also have a hotline to the Liverpool Street team to ask for help to haul out injured or incapable drunks.

Six people had already been laid out on stretchers by 9.30pm after “end-of-term” drinks. By 11.30 the casualties had become more extreme.

A trader, believed to be in his late twenties, was bleeding profusely from the back of his head but had no idea what had happened. He was found on the ground by police who called the Operation Mitre team for an ambulance.

One 38-year-old man was rescued after collapsing outside a vodka bar in Clerkenwell and a City trader was rushed in after getting so drunk after work that he fell over outside the Royal Exchange and suffered a serious head wound.

A 61-year-old former doctor, now an alcoholic living in a hostel, tumbled into the road by the Barbican and could not remember where he was or the day of the week.

Another man had to be ferried to A&E at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel because his wife refused to pick him up.