AS hundreds of people went out on the town with the best excuse ever to enjoy a few pints of Guinness, reporter SYREETA LUND went along to discover what all the fuss is about.

DRINK was the first thing I was confronted with when I went on a night out to explore the real meaning of St Patrick's Day.

I have admit I am English, but I was intrigued to know what made the Irish tick on the only day of the year dedicated to drinking to their green and pleasant land until the floor of the Gents becomes an attractive place to bed down for the night.

A pint of Guinness was high on the agenda and I supped a little of the creamy beverage which slipped down a treat, but what I did find hard to swallow was the in-your-face advertising of the drink.

Walking into Finn McCoul's in High Wycombe I was greeted with a round of clinking bar staff hustling around serving drinks and wearing Guinness T-shirts instructing customers to 'drink'.

A string of decorative Guinness garlands hung from the bar with the words 'St Who's Day?' with a big picture of, you guessed it, a pint of the black stuff underneath.

I reached the bottom of my pint glass but what I really wanted to reach was the bottom of what St Patrick's Day is all about some kind of celebration of Ireland and Irish culture.

The internet told me that St Patrick had originally been a slave in Ireland and ended up as a bishop.

However, he was also supposed to have driven all the snakes away from the country with his wooden staff, which all seems a bit odd to me.

Yet, I think St Patrick's Day is particularly special if you are from Ireland and is a real nostalgia trip for those away from home.

I spotted two men dressed in St Pat's regalia, complete with rather large and floppy toppers with the shamrock emblem and decided they must be either patriotic or simply plastic paddies.

One of them, Al Dean, 25, of High Wycombe, told me he had no Irish connections, but was just the 'creative type' who liked to join in and drink a lot, and said St Patrick's Day meant 'Guinness' to him.

His friend Tim Levicki, 26, had travelled from Marlow to enjoy what Wycombe had to offer but I felt a little disappointed when he told me he was only a quarter Irish.

I expected to see lots of Irish jigging but I don't really think I went to the right places because the only dance I saw was a drunken man meandering his way around the floor of The Hob Goblin to 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'.