But there is always that beacon of frivolity that shines through December, the one evening a year where everyone can let go and not care about their behaviour because, frankly, their colleagues . . . senior and junior . . . will all be too sloshed to notice. But now, even the office Christmas party is seen as an inappropriate setting for letting your hair down / crying to some whoareya in accounts about your failing relationship / puking on the hood of your boss's taxi.

A business health and safety consultancy has warned there is now etiquette involved when it comes to the annual office hooley. Of course, etiquette loosely translates as "the opposite of fun" and banning buckets of booze for thirsty workers, groping under the mistletoe and . . . our favourite . . . karaoke machines is not just a crackdown on one particular outlet of frolics, but an example of the global epidemic of fun reduction.

Across the water in England, it's a similar deal with Christmas decorations being banned from offices, as they might offend non-Christian religions (obviously, Jesus had a great deal to do with tinsel and chocolate Santas). Here, we are being told to leave the Christmas office party early and not to drink too much. This is probably the thickest thing I've heard all year. Everybody knows the whole point of drinking heaps at the office party is to subsidise a paltry salary with three glasses of red wine, one pear Kopparberg, 11 vodka and red bulls, a fat frog, a baby Guinness and two shots of Jaegermeister going some way to bulk up that week's pay packet.

And although the Christmas party is the latest outing to be hit by the fun police, it's certainly not the first. Pity the happy footballers who want to take off their shirt and run down the pitch after scoring a cracker. Yellow card for them. Aussie cricketers were also recently chastised for claiming too noisily and too often that they'd LBW-ed their Pom opponents. Of course a few rules might have some validity, but if you can't make a fool of yourself at the office party, then the world has gone mad. Or worse still . . . straight.