Although, according to research, not quite as broad as Americans. But that's neither here nor there.

The Brits are travel-happy. In fact, one of the biggest issues in the recent election there was "Damn and blast, how is a simple working man supposed to fly the family to Marbella for some sun once a year, Verbier for a little exercise, Paris for some shopping, and Florence for a nice little walking tour every now and again, and still feel that he's doing his part to keep the planet free from excess pollutants???"

Well, quite.

With a culture like that, you'd expect that most Brits would know, oh, I dunno, like the first thing about travelling? I've only ever been to the US and one trip to the tropics, so I cannot lay claim to any great sophistication here, but even I know that there are, ferinstance, fishy-type things in the sea. I mean, in England you can just walk to it; surely there's no excuse for this if you come from Blighty. Hell, if you come from Saskatchewan you still know there are fish in that big outdoor watery thing, whether it's a lake or an ocean.

Anyhoo, without further ado, we present some of the complaints lodged with UK travel companies by greviously aggreived tourists.

A company insider said: 'People are much more aware of their rights nowadays and much more tempted to blame someone if something goes wrong. We have noticed a surge in weird complaints over the last few years.

'Their instinct is to lash out and blame someone, and because it's such a litigious culture, people always think the travel company must be to blame.'

The Association of British Travel Agents said recently that a couple cancelled a two-week break in Majorca and demanded a refund because of the risk of contracting the SARS virus.

It was pointed out to them that Majorca was not affected by SARS, but they insisted on cancelling anyway.

Then they sued to get their cancellation fee back. And here is a small roundup from the article:

No one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled…

My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room and we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the rooms that we booked…

The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers, will we be OK staying here..?

It took us nine hours to fly to Jamaica from England – it only took the Americans three hours…

It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel… I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller…

I was bitten by a mosquito – no one said they could bite…

We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white…

We had to queue outside with no air conditioning…

…And finally, from a holidaymaker in Spain:

There were too many Spanish people. The receptionist spoke Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners.