Leading article: The badge of shame

There is little point to pleasure if it comes with no price tag and is separated from all notion of pain, remorse and regret. Classical writers understood this. "Post coitum omne animal triste est," they said, referring to the sadness that may follow another, different, pleasure. It's this element of incipient danger, downfall, or sin, that forms a key ingredient of pleasure in the first place. How dismal to think we could all be downing 14 pints, (as William Hague claimed to have done) only to wake up the next day feeling we had consumed nothing but orange juice.

Let's hear it for the hangover in all its livid glory - a suitable badge of honour, or shame, to remind us that we should pay for our vices.