I'll drink men under the table

She has fallen off her bike while drunkenly riding it home, been sick in the street and fallen flat on her face into gravel. When she was last kicked out of a pub just over two weeks ago, Jane Mathers decided it was time to curb her drinking - from seven nights a week to four or five.

"I'm definitely not an alcoholic," she insists when we meet in a pub (where else?) just off Oxford Street after she finishes work at an investment company where she is a receptionist. "I just love going out and having a good time. I drink a lot but so do my friends and I could stop at any time."

Jane, 27, says that when she goes out with her friends, a group of four or five other twenty-something professionals, male and female, she's always the last one standing. Not only can she keep up with her male friends, she can drink them under the table.

This week, young women like Jane were dubbed "loutettes" by Home Secretary David Blunkett for their drink-fuelled antics. He also said they played a part in the rise of violence in pubs and clubs, where once women were regarded as having a civilising effect. Loutettes is not a term Jane likes (she hates the word "ladette", too) and she says she's never seen women get into drunken fights; she certainly never has herself. "I'm a happy drunk," she says.

But she does drink much more than the weekly 21 units of alcohol - the maximum "safe" limit set by government - often four times as much. She can't tell me exactly how much she drinks (Jack Daniel's and Coke is her tipple) because by the end of the night, she'll have lost count. "But I can easily drink a bottle of whisky if I'm going out for a big night, a Friday or Saturday." She pauses. "Or both," she says with a smile. "I can go out and do it all again when I've had all day on Saturday to recover."

Jane looks surprisingly healthy - her eyes are only a little bit bloodshot, her brown hair is shiny and her skin is clear. "I can deal with hangovers. I usually go into work hungover but I'm fine, I can operate perfectly well, even if I've been out until five o'clock that morning, had two hours' sleep and am still drunk," she says.

"There have been times when I haven't gone to bed at all - I've just come in from a club, had a shower, got dressed and gone straight to work. That is hard but I've mastered the art of typing with shaky hands and after a good lunch and plenty of water, I'm back to normal.

'In my old job, I worked in an office and I would just avoid my boss all morning and I'd get away with it but now, because I'm a receptionist, I have to look presentable so I've made an effort to cut down on my partying. A bit."

As for debauchery, Jane doesn't think she behaves too badly. "I'm loud and I was thrown out of a pub the other week," she says. "I'd been to watch the Wimbledon final so I'd been drinking Pimm's for most of the day.

"My friends and I ended up in a pub and I was dancing on a chair. The bar staff told me to get down three times but I refused. Eventually, I was thrown out. I wasn't even allowed to get my bag.

"I''ve fallen over lots of times - in clubs, in the street. I'm not often sick when I drink but I have been sick in the street before. Then there was the time I fell off my bike..." Jane was cycling home to Fulham in the early hours after a night in the West End. "I don't know how it happened but there I was lying on the street. I really damaged my knees and the next day they were so swollen I could hardly walk." Another night, she was at a friend's party and fell face first on to the gravel drive. "I kind of forgot to put my hands out to stop myself. I got lots of cuts on my face but I'd had quite a bit to drink so I couldn't feel anything. I felt it the next day, though."

She couldn't care less about the people who think young women should be more "ladylike". "There is such a double standard. Men have been out having fun for generations and now women are doing it, too. What's wrong with that? I have fun, I look after my friends and they look after me. I might have had a few thumping hangovers or woken up and not remembered much of what happened the night before, but nothing bad has ever happened to us.

"We know all the dangers and we're careful. I used to get night buses home but now I'll get a taxi. I thought my drink might have been spiked once. I woke up the next morning and couldn't remember a thing, I'd had a complete black-out. But then, that could have been the alcohol."

Any regrettable one-night stands (a third of women have had unprotected sex while drunk)? "No," she says. "I've snogged a few men in bars and some of them have been quite hideous but I'd never go home with a stranger. I prefer to be out having fun with my mates anyway. That's why we go to gay clubs a lot - we don't get hassled there. I've seen groups of men scour a bar for the drunkest-looking girl and virtually attack her. It's repulsive."

She grew up in a small country village ("we only had two pubs") with her sister and parents; her father runs a haulage company, her mother is a nurse. Jane started drinking occasionally at 13. "It was the usual story - my friends and I would raid our parents' drinks cabinets and meet up on playing fields to get drunk." At 16 she was drinking in pubs, using fake ID. "I'm sure they'd rather I didn't, but my parents are resigned to the fact that I've always drunk too much," she says.

After several years spent travelling and doing odd jobs, she moved to London last year. "It was amazing, there's a pub everywhere you look." She spends more than £400 a month on going out, a large chunk of her salary - if she did not know where to find the best-priced drinks in town, she'd spend a lot more.

But her finances should be the least of her worries. Women who drink more than 21 units a week increase their risk of heart disease by 57 per cent and drink-related deaths among women have trebled in seven years.

Then there is the possibility of brain damage, liver disease and fertility problems. Is she worried about her health? "I don't really think about it that much," she says. "I probably should but I don't feel unwell, maybe a little bit tired. I might not be so laid back about it in 10 years' time when I've got loads of wrinkles but I'll probably have stopped by then, or cut down."

Earlier this year, a study by the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, found - for the first time - that women are now more likely to binge drink than men (one in five women, compared with one in seven men), especially those in their twenties.

Eric Appleby, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, puts it down to a number of things: "Women's position in society has changed. They have more money and independence and they are increasingly 'one of the boys'. They are staying single longer. In previous generations, women tended to settle down in their early twenties, now many are waiting until they are in their thirties.

"The drinks industry has also become increasingly female-friendly. It's not all spit-and-sawdust pubs now, there are all sorts of bars that appeal to women and there are drinks targeted at women such as Bacardi Breezers and Smirnoff Ice."

But Jane isn't yet tuning into warning voices like his. Last night after our meeting, she was going to Heaven, the club near Charing Cross station. "It's £2 a drink and it's open late - not bad for a Monday night," she says. "I don't need to drink to have fun ... but it helps."

Another thumping hangover beckoning?