Avoiding peril at the office do

I avoid socialising with work people. I generally think it is bad enough that I have to look at them all day without spending my free time with them too.

As a result work Christmas parties are an annual tour of duty.

Fortunately, I’ve made a successful freelance career which means I don’t really have to go to office parties. So I emailed round my friends looking for stories of office party shame to regale you with.

I was hoping for sordid stories of photocopying body parts and drunken copulation with the bloke from the post room with the orthopaedic shoe.

Unfortunately it seems my friends are rather more restrained than that and by 3pm the best story my inbox contained was from a friend whose French boss had never seen a Christmas cracker before and was utterly mystified at that concept.

Apparently the words “what the hell is that?� where emitted in a high pitched French shriek.

However there were a few classics. One top story involved drunkenly telling the partners of a law firm that they should form a band, allotting instruments, giving them a name and sketching out their first album.

Mercifully they never made it to rehearsal.

But my all time favourite award for idiotic office party behaviour goes to the girl who drunkenly told her entirely female office that they all fancied her, and worse, couldn’t have her as a riposte to being told she ought to call a cab. Genius.