Bringing out the party animal in us

BELIEVE it or not, the Christmas office party season is already in full swing. Go figure. Friends of mine who work in the restaurant business are already relating war stories of corporate excess and dining debauchery – all right up there again at pre-crash levels, it seems. With such merrymaking comes the inevitable over-indulgence – specifically getting scuttered, ossified, blutered and banjoed, as we stumble and totter crooked lines on streets broad and narrow.

In his spirited probe into why we imbibe, author Mark Forsyth’s just published ‘A Short History of Drunkenness’, which traces humankind’s love affair with booze from our primate ancestors through to Prohibition, investigating why we imbibe and the fact that virtually every culture has nurtured a love of the demon drink.

Coursing through our veins from birth to death, it blesses an offering to our ancestors, seals a tribute on projects completed, offers a pathway to sleep or straightens the back as a courageous clarion call to battle.

And the addiction is not just limited to us humans. On an island off the coast of Panama, monkeys include in their daily diet the fruit of the astrocaryum tree – whose fruit is 4.5pc proof. After extended chewing of the booze-laden berries, these piddled primates get boisterous and noisy, before eventually rendering themselves completely unsteady and unable to stand.

Often the younger creatures lose their footing on tree branches and fall from great heights to seriously injure themselves.

The following morning, the males and females engage in extended periods of bickering and squabbling before slowly settling back into a normal routine.

Pretty much answers where that phrase – ‘getting monkey-faced’ – came from, doesn’t it…