Next time you need a little ready cash, try falling asleep in the bathroom of a pub, then suing the owners for failing to wake you up before last call.

That's what happened in Dublin, where a judge awarded five grand to a woman who dozed off on the throne in her local pub, only to wake up alone and in the dark. Marian Gahan sued -- and won -- on the grounds that the publican should have checked the stalls before locking up for the night. She sued? For a lot of Dubliners, that would've been a dream come true.

Not to be left out of the technology revolution, Milwaukee's Miller Brewing Company has created a "beer pager" to help users and boozers manage their hectic drinking schedules.

The Miller Lite Beer Pager lets users input a list of email addresses, favorite places, and other crucial party-planning notes, which can be sent out to notify revelers of upcoming keggers and other such events. When a page is sent, the application automatically records the event on everyone's calendar, including who has accepted or declined.

"The Beer Pager is a faster, easier and more creative way to manage social get-togethers. We like to think of it as Milwaukee's contribution to the technology revolution," said Rich Lalley, Miller Lite marketing director.

Created by San Francisco's Red Sky Interactive, the 6MB desktop application can be downloaded for free, and requires Macromedia's Shockwave plug-in to enable the pager's sci-fi moving parts and R2-D2-like noises.

When a pointer is dragged over the bottle cap icon, the familiar-"pafffff" sound of an unleashed beverage is heard.

Miller, the brewer of Miller Lite, Meister Brau, Milwaukee's Best, and Mickey's Malt Liquor, recommends that only those over 21 download the software. Visitors to the site are asked to enter their birth date, and those who fail to submit an adult age are curiously redirected to the Go.com portal home page.

• A German academic has just announced that women who drink beer are more likely to keep slim than teetotallers - although he is suspiciously called Professor Hoffmeister.
• Three people were drowned in beer in 1814 when a vat burst at the Meux brewery in Tottenham Court Road, sweeping away the brewery wall. A dozen more people were suffocated as crowds rushed to drink the escaping beer.
• Harry Houdini had to be rescued in 1911 after he was overcome by fumes while trying to escape from a locked trunk submerged in a tank of Tetley bitter.
• Dylan Thomas, the poet and drinking enthusiast, once claimed that he rode home on the top of a bus - "right on top, not just on the upper deck" - after sinking 49 pints of Guinness. (Rumour has it he also pulled a fat bird that night)
• A Parisian flew a hot air balloon over Prussian troops during the 1871 seige of Paris so that he could buy a crate of Bass beer from a pub in England.
• During the Middle Ages, inspectors tested the quality of ale by pouring it on to wooden benches and sitting in the puddle. Good beer made leather breeches stick to the seat. (Much as in the same way that a good curry pebbledashes the inside of your toilet)

In what some view as earth-shattering event, 23yr old Enfield software developer Piers Finlayson was recently beaten in a drinking competition by 21yr old Kara O'Riordan.

Mr. Finlayson (a known heavy drinker) decided to call Miss O'Riordan's bluff when she suggested they have a drinking competition, and comparing his considerable 15 stone body weight to her 0.4 grammes he was clearly quite confident in his ability to see the matter laid to rest.

The initial challenge was to "shotgun" a bottle of Red, and after a pre-match test of the approved shotgunning technique it resulted in a dead-heat.

Never being one to call it a day, Mr. Finlayson upped the stakes to shotgunning two bottles of Red. Miss O'Riordan readily agreed to the challenge. At every point in the following few seconds Miss O'Riordan was comfortably ahead of Mr. Finlayson, with Mr. Finlayson not even managing to finish his second bottle.

"I can't believe I've been beaten by a girl!", complained shocked Mr. Finlayson. "I would've won if I hadn't had a few pints beforehand", he added convincingly.

Later that evening Miss O'Riordan was seen to be suffering no ill effects from the challenge, whilst Mr. Finlayson was seen slumped on the floor with his belly hanging out of his trousers.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian publican has been fined thousands of dollars after the winner of a drinking competition in his bar died of alcohol poisoning, court officials said Friday.

Allan Taylor, a 33-year-old computer technician, died after drinking 34 glasses of beer, four bourbons and 17 tequilas in 100 minutes in a Sydney bar in 1997.

The New South Wales Licensing Court heard that Taylor died within hours of the competition. A post-mortem revealed a level of 0.353 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood, compared to the legal limit for driving of 0.05.

The court Thursday fined Brian Whelan of the Strathfield Hotel A$20,000 (US$13,100) because he failed to exercise his License in the public interest when his staff failed to stop Taylor drinking. Whelan told the court he was not at the hotel at the time of the competition.

``The repeated sales of trays of tequila should have...alerted staff to the fact that something may have been wrong,'' said licensing magistrate Denis Collins. ``The sale of that quantity of tequila must have caused suspicion by bar staff and that suspicion should have been acted upon,'' said Collins.

The court heard that drinkers in the competition were set a 100-minute limit to consume as much alcohol as possible, with one point for a beer, three for wine and eight for spirits. Taylor won the competition by 44 points. The drinking competition called ``Feral Friday'' had been held on three previous occasions and involved two teams of six or seven drinkers from two companies.

"Getting drunk in a foreign city is about to become easier. Heineken has developed software allowing owners of Palm Pilot hand-held computers to be directed to their nearest pub.

The Bartrek software uses the GPS satellite network to find out exactly where the user is, then checks its database of nearby pubs to find the most suitable. The user is shown a map with arrows pointing them in the right direction.

There are 19 cities in the guide, which offers tourist maps and pictures of the bars you are heading for, along with advice on the best ones in the city.

Heineken is also working on a version for hand-helds rinning Windows CE. Download the software from www.heineken.com

"Date Bait" is one new introductions service that cuts to the chase.

After an hour of "structured mingling", lonely hearts make a note of everyone in the room they would enjoy seeing naked, swap lists, pair up and get cracking.