Back when Michael Caine was a sex symbol, Michael Jackson still black, and Chicken Tikka was considered the height of culinary chic; the perfect stag night simply consisted of a case of beer, your best mates, a fully loaded Polaroid, and an amateur stripper named Bambi. How times have changed...
According to the office for national statistics we're now far less likely to get married in the first place and if we do get dragged down the aisle it's far later than ever before. In fact for men the average age has crept up to an all time high of 30 and a half years, so there's little wonder that it's not just a small cause for celebration when two people in this Bridget Jones world manage to step away from their work stations, microwave-meals-for-one and eBay auctions and actually commit to each another.
What this means for the stag weekend is that generally couples have more money to spend on their respective hen and stag weekends and what that means is that the stag weekends are getting more elaborate, adventurous and action packed. In other words the ante is being upped along with the expectations. Forget sitting on your rear and ordering the seafood special at your local, the typical 21st century stag weekend consists of action packed days filled with paintball army combat style, canyoning, quad biking, Munich beer halls, Estonian feasts and coasteering. For those of you who think crossing Piccadilly Circus during peak hour is about as rugged terrain as you've ever seen, coasteering is the fine art of scrambling around a coastline and leaping off cliffs into wave lapped coves below. It's about as close to becoming Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as anyone who works in an office is going to get. Ever. And the guys are loving it. In fact, coasteering - as well as the trusty faithfulls like paintball and quad biking - is fast becoming the new black when it comes to planning the ultimate stag weekend. There truly is nothing like getting a bunch of lads together adding a strong element of fear, the smell of competition and the threat of ritual humiliation to bring out the dormant Evil Knieval within.
And it seems this chest beating machismo and daring even stretches into the cultural realm as scores of quintessential British stags are downloading Google earth, thumbing through a phrase book and heading off shore to experience far flung destinations for their weekend of freedom. The foreign office released a detailed survey at the end of last year and found that a staggering 70 per cent of young Brits "now prefer to travel abroad for hen and stag parties". That sure is a giant leap from our parents' night out in Bournemouth. And perched at the top of the destination pack is undeniable the cool of Eastern Europe. Riga. Vilnius. Tallinn. Bratislava. Moscow. They're so cool they're hot. The Iron Curtain is cool and the Eastern Bloc is rocking. This is principally from the recent expansion of the European Union making costly and irritating visas at thing of the past and the fact that flights are now cheaper than a ticket to see Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits tour at Wembley. And let's not forget the exchange rate. Ah the sweet exchange rate, where often one humble quid will be enough to buy more than one pint of quality local brew. This point is often argument enough to entice punters from expensive metro poles like London (where one quid may buy you a copy of The Sun and half a mars bar).
So 21st Century Stags unite! The options are as endless as your imagination. That really is the easy part. Now it's just a matter of convincing her to marry you...
