An unreliable guide to icebreakers
NEED TO KICK OFF A CONVERSATION OR TWO? ELEANOR ROBERTSON CAN HELP YOU OUT (MAYBE).
Making small talk with people you don’t know is basically an extreme sport. It’s the social equivalent of slalom skiing, except you’re not wearing a helmet or a bodysuit. (Unless you’re trying to break the ice at a dirt-biking leotard enthusiast convention.) The course ahead of you requires powerful manoeuvres executed with grace and precision. That’s why you need a coach (i.e. me) to take you through the moves. ...................
MEETING THE PARENTS // How do you get off on the right foot with people whose nude sex produced the person with whom you’re having nude sex? That’s the problem with meeting your partner’s parents: everything is about sex, but nobody’s allowed to talk about it. (And rightly so, because come on, ew, no thank you.) The master move here is the humble pre-exam cheat sheet, where you force your partner to recount the last two or three conversations they’ve had with their folks. Then, you bring up the topics as though you thought of them yourself. “Nice to meet you, Linda! Boy, I sure do love brightly coloured resin jewellery and the films of moustachioed dreamboat Tom Selleck.”
PARTY OF STRANGERS // Did you know you can reanimate a corpse that’s been clinically dead for up to four hours by taking it to a house party where it only knows one person? The adrenaline wakes them right up! That’s the risk here – combine adrenaline with alcohol, and you’ll blurt out, “My grandparents were first cousins!” to a room full of strangers. A better alternative: spreading rumours about famous folks. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or false, as long as everyone knows the celeb in question. “Did you ever hear about the time *flips through mental Rolodex* Pamela Anderson *flip flip* adopted a donkey and *flip* named it Jean-paul Sartre?” You’re in.
THE WORK DO // Work functions have one of the lowest difficulty settings for icebreakers, because everyone has a very obvious thing in common. But it’s like walking a tightrope – you want to talk about something other than work, but it can’t be something that makes things weird the next day. I believe the difficulty of striking this delicate balance is one of the main reasons people have children. They’re like a human shield – bring up a cute photo of Jendyll in a beanie with animal ears and everyone will eat right out of your hand. If you don’t have kids, consider talking about your nieces and nephews, or googling ‘human baby’ and pretending the 18th result is a product of your own loins.
AT YOUR LOCAL // The usual way to get to know people at the pub is to simply get drunk and see what happens, but if that’s not an option, you can always press the emergency red button: funny names. Yes, this is the time to reveal you have a friend named Edward Craps; or a former boss named Dick Wristy; or an ancestor called Hugh Buttocksford. These poor souls shouldn’t labour under the burden of an undignified name for nothing – you essentially have a moral obligation to make fun of them. Drunk people can’t resist cheap laughs, either, so it’s the perfect crime.
SOMEONE’S GETTING MARRIED // The key to mastering Wedding Chat is emotional intuition. Hardly anyone’s going to be in a relaxed state of mind, so if you want to have a successful conversation with someone who’s not completely plastered, it’s your job to find out which neuroses this wedding has dredged up for them. Are they thinking about their own wedding? Their partner? Their lack of partner? How much they love and/or hate the happy couple? Do a little digging – most people will surrender the info pretty quickly. This will give you at least 20 minutes’ worth of material to work with.