The World According to Clarkson (30 page)

I adore Boxing Day drinks parties. I think school nativity plays are funny. I don’t get stuck in traffic jams
leaving London. I don’t get in a panic about last-minute shopping and I don’t find it even remotely stressful to be with the family for a few days.

That said, there is one feature of Christmas that fills me with such fear and such dread that I genuinely shiver whenever it is mentioned. It is the damp log in the fire, the mould on the smoked salmon, the advertisement in the Queen’s speech. It is… the Works Do.

When I was a schoolboy my mum and dad had a toy factory and, starting in January every year, the staff would each save 10p a week for the annual yuletide knees-up.

By July they would have enough for the prawn cocktail and by September they were dizzy with anticipation about the first glass of Baileys. I never understood why.

I still don’t. The notion that you turn off your computer at 6 p.m. and at 6.01 p.m. are making merry with people you don’t like very much over a beaker of Pomagne seems odd.

They are not your friends or you would have seen them socially at some point during the year. So why think for a moment that the evening will be anything other than hell?

Christmas in Britain these days is almost completely ruined by the office party.

The streets become full of ordinary people who have suddenly lost the ability to walk in a straight line. And the atmosphere in every restaurant is firebombed by the table of 60 who order food not for its taste but its aerodynamic efficiency.

What’s more, for the past week it has been impossible
to get anyone on the telephone because they’re either choosing an outfit or finding a restaurant to ruin or having their hair done ready for the Big Day.

I swear some people put more effort into the office party than they do into the family event a few days later. Last year the
Top Gear
Christmas knees-up was organised, as is the way with these things, by someone who is nineteen.

So I ended up in a throbbing basement, looking at my watch every few minutes and thinking: can I really go at 10 p.m.? This year I’m not going at all.

So that’s the first thing. Never, ever let the firm’s outing be organised by the most junior member of the team because their idea of a good night out – lots of vomit and silly hats – is likely to be far removed from yours.

You think you have nothing to talk about with the man who drives the forklift in the warehouse, but you have even less in common with the office juniors.

Your house plants, for instance, are alive – but you can’t smoke any of them.

There is more food in your fridge than booze. You hear your favourite songs when you’re in the lift and, while you still like to see the dawn, you prefer to have had a night’s kip beforehand.

There is another problem. Wherever the office juniors are, all they talk about is where they’re going next. Wherever you are, all you want to do is go to bed. And they say, the day afterwards, ‘I’m never going to drink
that much again.’ You say, ‘I just can’t seem to drink as much as I used to.’

The second thing about the works party is sex. A survey this week revealed that 45 per cent of people have had it away at the Christmas do. Why? You sit opposite the plump girl for 48 weeks and it never once occurs to you that she is interesting. So how come, after one warm wine, she only needs to put on a paper hat to become Jordan?

Even this year’s
Sunday Times
party is likely to be a nightmare, but for a rather unusual reason. You see, the BBC recently said that its staff were to stop writing columns for newspapers. Andrew Marr, John Simpson and our very own John Humphrys are affected.

Me, though? The BBC is not bothered. My opinion, it seems, is irrelevant and worthless. And I’m sure that Humphrys will be duty bound to bring that up.

Sunday 14 December 2003

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These allegations later proved to be completely unfounded, and no charges were ever brought.