Being officially self-employed and unofficially semi-retired after a career in accountancy, featuring five redundancies, I miss a good company Christmas party. When I was at the Manchester G-MEX we were always busy through December and into the new year with concerts and corporate parties. When the concerts stopped it was indoor funfairs. They all required my services so no rest for the wicked.
There was the occasional event that made it all worthwhile. Back in December 1997 we did two nights of Oasis that sold out in minutes. I was inundated with calls from people I had not heard from for years on the off chance I could get them a ticket and eventually I just stopped answering the phone. I had the added task of making sure the new-fangled website was working. We were inundated with hits from around the world when one of the shows was broadcast on MTV and also live on the radio.
Sit back and watch the full show when you have the time. Oasis were at the top of their game on this tour. As a venue we had stopped doing concerts after the recent opening of the Manchester Arena but the band wanted to play here to a standing audience and for our staff it was the best Christmas party ever.
Mike_H says
I can’t recall ever having been to a really good works Xmas do.
Most of the ones I’ve been invited to have either ended with flying fists and/or vomiting or else they’ve been rather tedious boreathons.
Perhaps I’ve always worked with the wrong colleagues at the wrong firms.
Gatz says
Peer into pub windows in the early evening at this time of your and you’re pretty sure to see a table full of people smiling tensely at each other, wondering when the fun is going to start. They always have the same, fixed expressions as they grin wordlessly around the room. Awful affairs in my experience, but then we never had Oasis to serenade us.
minibreakfast says
The only works do I chose to attend was the year we had a weekend at Disneyland Paris, as we weren’t expected to socialise with the boss or each other, except of course on the Eurostar, which was just about tolerable.
davebigpicture says
Known as EuroDismal amongst my colleagues as well as a couple of other names I won’t mention here as they are in poor taste.
Bingo Little says
Two of the best parties I’ve ever been to were work Christmas dos. I think they’re great when you’re young, free and single but they start to suck donkey balls as you get older.
Rigid Digit says
In 20 odd years of working, apart from the Annual (Monthly?) Apprenticeship Drinkies, this year was the first Do that I actually wanted to attend, and enjoyed.
Previous years have always been very tame, conservative affairs – usually over a lunch break, and then back to work afterwards.
Diddley Farquar says
I remember a great night when I worked for Virgin. Branson arranged for a party at The End club in the West End. They had male and female ice scupltures. You put your face under the sculpted frozen crotch and they poured free Virgin vodka down your gob. We danced til we dropped to throbbing techno. That was by far the best I’ve experienced.
Kaisfatdad says
Frozen crotches dispensing vodka. That is impressive. Nero himself would have been envious.
MC Escher says
I find that the right mix of alcohol and drugs makes me the life and soul of any party, so i love Christmas do’s. I am just a totally fun guy.
Mike_H says
During the peak years of my mis-spent youth, which I mis-spent very recklessly indeed, I was either unemployed or working where no organised Xmas revels were on offer.
I probably enjoyed myself immensely, as I can’t remember a single Christmas from those days, but feel a warm nostalgic glow nevertheless.
deramdaze says
I miss Mark Lamarr on the radio at Christmas.
For about 9 or 10 years up to, I think, about 2007, Mark did a LIVE show on Christmas Day afternoon, playing blues, soul, rock ‘n’ roll etc. with a seasonal theme.
I haven’t looked, but I suspect the equivalent Radio 2 show this year will focus on show tunes, an organist or the bleedin’ rat pack.
Come back, Mark, wherever you are.
DogFacedBoy says
He used to do it every year on GLR in the 1990s, think I have em on tape so I could put it on and time travel a bit
Beany says
Just 5 months before the insurance claims company The Accident Group went bust and made all the 2,400 staff redundant by text message they held their Christmas party at the G-MEX. I have just seen a press cutting online that said that all of the 2,500-plus staff who lived more than 35 miles from Manchester were transported to the city and put up in hotels at TAG’s expense. The entertainment for the night was Atomic Kitten and Edwin Starr. The whole bash was reputed to have cost the company £2.5m. All I remember of the event was lots of drunken people picking fights with their bosses. There were a few broken bones as I recall.
As a senior manager, whenever I attended a company Christmas party, usually at the Yang Sing or Midland Hotel, I avoided alcohol from the free bar and ducked out early. I was aware that there was going to be someone with a grudge they wanted to settle by insults, abuse or worse.
mikethep says
I have one fond memory…I was ver’ver’ drunk, obviously. I had convinced myself that I not only needed, but deserved a company car. A colleague had just left, and his spiffy little Triumph Sodomite (how we laughed) was gathering dust out in the yard. Perfect, I thought. But my boss was dragging his feet for reasons I couldn’t understand – in fact he was pulling strings behind the scene because I didn’t in fact rate a company jamjar after all.
Anyhow, back to the party. At about 2 in the morning I buttonholed the boss and yelled at him, ‘Where’s my fucking car, you little bastard?’ He smiled at me in a most sinister fashion. To top off a splendid evening I was sick in a police car – the policeman brother of a colleague was kindly giving me a lift home.
I got a note the next morning from the boss. To my amazement, he wasn’t actually firing me – the note said, ‘Nick’s car is yours. S.’
Beany says
“the policeman brother of a colleague was kindly giving me a lift home.”
Yeah right…
In the early ’80s I worked at a very large factory outside Leeds. Too large for an official works do, the accounts office staff would traipse off to the pub on the final lunch break. Just before, the evil boss would ring and select one of us to compile some spurious report for him that he needed to have at 2pm. This ensured we all had to be back by then. One very merry chap called Frank (the brother of the Buzzcocks manager as it so happened) delivered his report to EB. He was expected to stand and await further instructions as the report was scanned (evil bastard too). Frank leaned against the wall and slowly proceeded to slide down to the floor. He was quickly dismissed from the meeting and the “urgent” report was probably binned.
mikethep says
“the policeman brother of a colleague was kindly giving me a lift home.”
It’s true, actually – which is why he was so pissed off…
RubyBlue says
Adam and Joe’s Christmas show. It was just stupid titting about; they opened stupid presents throughout the show, getting drunker and drunker. Fantastic. They must be on the podcast somewhere.
Working largely at home, I don’t have Christmas do’s any more, but they were a blast when I was teaching. After the longest and most difficult term everyone in the faculty would just get utterly rat-arsed and swap gossip and personal revelations and then crash at someone’s house, as you must. It was very much ‘us against the rest of the school/world’ and a good bonding experience. I don’t miss The Fear, though.
badartdog says
You do know there’s a new one out on Christmas day this year, Ruby. (Adam’s recent podcasts have been great, this one is trailed as him and Joe talking bobbins, basically).
badartdog says
(should have done the @rubyblue thing there.)
RubyBlue says
@badartdog Thank you! That’s an early Christmas pressie. 🙂 This has made me genuinely happy.
RubyBlue says
@badartdog and other interested parties: it’s up! Adam Buxton podcast, iTunes. Not listened yet.
retropath2 says
Hmmmmm, fings ain’t etc etc. Long gone is the day when wards were awash with laughing juice , virtually banned nowadays, even smiles are felt to be a hindrance to efficiency.
Meanwhile, out in GP land, our Xmas “do” is all the staff getting pissed at my expense, in some vile corporate function-dome, whilst the (mostly muslim anyway) Docs shuffle awkwardly about. I never go if I can help it, ghastliness unencumbered.
Ha, some of my team think I’m teetotal!
Dodger Lane says
I used to quite enjoy them, despite the horrible food. We all got pissed, told our Japanese bosses what we thought of them, staggered home and then I woke up realising that the best laid plans of ending up in bed with that girl I had been admiring all year long had ended up with a shocking headache. Oddly the one I remembered with most fondness was some pre-Xmas drinks affair in the office which ended up with us raiding the boss’s drinks cabinet, carting away cartons of wine which were intended for some official use, pouring sake down each other’s throat and spraying each other with champagne. It’s a miracle we were never sacked, nor even given a talking to. Mind you, the pay rise that year was negligible.
Now, it’s a lunch with a few colleagues but I still can’t avoid making a tit of myself.
Getthenet says
I miss listening to Peel’s Festive 50. Got a box full of tapes and mini discs from about ’79 to 2004 somewhere in the loft. Which I never listen to.