PEOPLE are drinking more to distract themselves from constantly worrying about cancer.

New research shows that every time new research shows a new link to cancer, people respond by getting so drunk they forget they even read about it in the first place.

In a review of cancer research projects, the Institute for Studies found that each one of them can cause an average British adult to drink at least 170 per cent more than the recommended daily limit.

Professor Henry Brubaker said: “This 1996 report linking cancer to self-assembly furniture is the research equivalent of nine gin and tonics or a cheeky wee bucket of Albanian Chardonnay.

“An American study from 2002 linking cancer to looking at a photograph of a cartoon badger smoking a pipe is the same as lining up 14 shots of Jim Beam along the bar and proclaiming yourself ‘The Shitfaced King of the Monkeymen’.

“And any link of any kind between cancer and chocolate can make a British woman in her thirties drink so much Pinot Grigio she ends up falling asleep upside down on a strange man’s toilet.”

He added: “There is of course a link between stress and cancer and drinking. Stress causes both cancer and drinking, while drinking eliminates both stress and any memory of articles about stress and cancer, which in a nice, neat way are now the single biggest cause of stress.

“The answer is to either stop reading newspapers or for every drop of alcohol in this country to be sold at below cost price.”

Meanwhile, Brubaker admitted that bringing up the subject of drinking and cancer on a Friday, during a spell of warm, sunny weather, does make him seem like the sort of utterly miserable fucker who deserves to be eaten by a crocodile.