Maybe it is time to cancel the Christmas work do

The office Christmas party season is upon us, a time of tepid white wine, turkey crown set menus, blistering hangovers and foggy memories of trying to recreate the Dirty Dancing lift with Bald Dave from Accounts the night before.

Generally speaking, I love parties (to the extent that I wrote a whole book about one), but work Christmas dos are the absolute worst. One of the major perks of being a freelancer is that my equivalent of an office shindig is switching on the fairy lights, then sitting in my pyjamas eating mince pies while watching The Apprentice. Perfect.

The office Christmas parties I went to in my early days as a fledgling journalist were lengthy, booze-soaked affairs, which would culminate in some grotty pub where we all tried to blot out the ultimate futility of existence by putting The Final Countdown on the jukebox and watching the work experience girl snog colleagues old enough to be her father.

But no more! In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, unions are now offering advice to companies so that they can avoid incidents of sexual harassment at their festive shindigs. I’m not entirely sure how this advice would work in practice after eight gallons of mulled wine in the Slug and Lettuce private hire room, but I suppose it’s a good idea to show willing.

Still, my feeling is that if someone needs to be told how not to sexually harass someone, perhaps this individual shouldn’t be invited to the party in the first place. And if the problem is so endemic, then the gathering should probably be cancelled altogether. Now, that’s a policy

I can get behind.