WE at Swift Half would love to pride ourselves on being great drinkers. But sadly we can’t.

Anyone who has spent more than three hours down a pub with us would testify to that.

Maybe it’s a good thing for our health, both mental and physical, as well as our bank balances, that nature has blessed us with an automatic off switch when it comes to boozing, which manifests itself in the form of passing out, or being thrown out of the pub completely.

But if we were looking for inspiration to lift us up to the higher echelons of hardcore drinking, to where would we turn?

The answer, apparently, is the Cook Islands.

A study by the CIA no less (so it must be correct) worked out how much pure alcohol was consumed on average per year by citizens of 189 countries.

The clever research, as reported by the Mail,  looked at what people drank, and how much they drank it.

The, almost literally, staggering results revealed that those in the Cook Islands consumed about 12.97 litres of pure alcohol every year.

That amount, made up from all the different alcoholic drinks they had, is the same amount as about 100 glasses of wine.

A litre of vodka, for example, contain 375mls of pure alcohol, while a standard five per cent beer would contain 28mls.

Men on the Cook Islands, which perhaps not surprisingly is a popular tourist hotspot, drink around 10 drinks on an average night out, while it’s closer to seven for women.

The next four nations in the top five are all European, namely Latvia in second, followed by the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Austria, where the legal drinking age is just 16.

But where are the Brits, we hear you slur…

The UK is down in 24th spot, with 9.7litres of pure alcohol consumed every year, while the US was a relatively sober 35th place.

According to a separate study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Brits consume about 4.4 pints of beer or 2.3 bottles of wine on average every week.

Which means maybe Swift Half isn’t so bad at drinking after all then….