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We should never glamorise binge-drinking, in the young or the old, but one of the reassuring things about this research is the implication that this is an area of human activity where people profit from experience, rather than repeating the same mistakes.

Learning to handle a hangover with grace is as much part of the education of an English gentleman as learning to ride to hounds or tie a Windsor knot. Fans of P G Wodehouse treasure the first meeting between Bertie Wooster and Jeeves in a 1916 short story. "I was feeling pretty rocky," admits Bertie, after a night on the tiles. Enter Jeeves with a miraculous pick-me-up ("Gentlemen have told me they find it extremely invigorating") of Worcestershire sauce, raw egg and red pepper. Bertie's gratitude as his head clears knows no bounds.

As a habitué of the infamous Drones Club, Bertie became such a connoisseur of the symptoms of over-indulging that he identified six distinct kinds of hangover – the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie – each with its own manifestations.

To those, I would add the Big Ben, the Tumble-Dryer and the Dying Duck. Others would have their own horrors to relate. But the point about the most memorably awful hangovers is that you vow not to repeat them if possible.

Your body rebels at the excesses you have put it through and, even when you are three sheets to the wind at a party, a little voice in your head tells you when to make your excuses and get ready for bed. That is why the old are cannier when it comes to drink. They have learnt how to pace themselves, like seasoned athletes.

When Andy Murray won the 2012 US Open, his first Grand Slam, the normally teetotal Scot treated himself to a few glasses of champagne on the plane home. His schoolboy error was duly punished. Murray was not physically sick, but he was so disorientated, according to his girlfriend Kim, that he tried to brush his teeth with face cream.

How we chortled, we older men with harder heads, when we heard that story! If we tried to keep up with Murray on the tennis court, we would be humiliated. But at our own game, our skills honed over a lifetime of nursing throbbing heads, we have the beating of him and his generation.

And we always will. There are, praise be, some life skills that only experience can teach.