Lurking behind most party animals is, well, an animal. Especially at Christmas, they’re to be spotted eating, drinking and practicing mating rituals at a party near you. Like herds of buffalo at a watering hole, they’ll be three deep at the bar, parting only to let an attractive female through. The evening always begins with the best of behaviour and an optimistically romantic Christmassy approach, but beware, because before long the evening ceases to be the Bing Crosby Christmas Special and becomes a wildlife documentary. The partridge in that pear tree in the corner could be your husband, crashed into the Christmas conifer, and those turtle doves on the sofa are actually married to other people. When you think about it, says Aoife O’Brien, all that’s missing is a breathy David Attenborough voiceover …
Rather like the jungle, a party has to have a sense of hidden danger, not knowing who’s going to do what next lends an exciting frisson. Is your partner really still discussing environmental erosion in the west of Ireland with that pretty girl or is it time to land on him like a hawk? She could, after all, be a preying mantis under that Prada party dress.
“It’s those Funnel Web Spiders you have to look out for”, says a girlfriend. “They will search out and devour the only single eligible man before we others have even had their first drink, and leave you dancing with the Christmas Fairy for the rest of the evening”.
“There’s a Hippo at every party too”, she claims, “who spends most of his time submerged under booze, then comes up every so often to mutter something unintelligible before disappearing again”. I know what she’s talking about: then Mrs Hippo appears and with preternatural strength drags him home.
The Christmas Cougar is omnipresent. She emerges only at night, mid-December, to early January. Lithe and wearing a lot of leopard or tiger print, on closer scrutiny you will find it totters on stiletto sandals rather than all fours, although, when inebriated it has on occasion been spotted crawling. It pounces, often without warning, and feeds mainly on the young, ideally male and half its age. She could buy and sell the reindeer girls dancing around their handbags with red antler hairbands on. They kind of wish they were her but are more interested in forming a pop/dance group and winning X Factor. Cougar wipes their eye with experience and could devour a boy band in an evening.
Look out too for the Panthers. Dressed in black with a touch of leather somewhere, stealthy and rarely drunk, they’ll prey on the giddily inebriated reindeer, charming them into dizzy submission. A friend who’s approaching 50 still swears his black T-shirt is his best friend at parties. Teamed with a black leather jacket I tell him he looks lascivious and menacing but it does seem to have gotten him through his libidinous forties and he’s still getting away with it. He wouldn’t go near Cougar for fear, at best, of rejection, at worst, being devoured and spat out.
One handsome friend marks his territory from the off, like a stately lion. Nothing can separate him from his lair (the bar). He keeps his girlfriend close by and pity the poor unfortunate who tries to chat her up. The would-be predator is seen off in no uncertain terms with the withering equivalent of a ferocious lion’s roar. Rejected suitor skedaddles like a frightened ferret.
The dancefloor is overflowing with case studies for the wildlife spotter, and it just gets better as the evening progresses. While the slinky-hipped will throw a few snake-like shapes and the parrots dance as if on hot coals, the music is getting tackier by the minute with floor-fillers. By the time the DJ spins the Macarena or Viva Espana, there’s always a bull whose best friend has taken his shirt off in the manner of a Toreador. Bull boy runs at it, fingers out like horns and you’d better not be anywhere in the vicinity when he falls over.
Never dance with the chest thumping gorilla, he’ll swing you around like a bunch of bananas and God forbid he lets go. Hospitals are full of disco casualties at Christmas.
I’ll never forget Christmas 1999 when a gorilla grabbed me to do a bit of rock ‘n’ roll. Back he swung me and I clung to his sweaty hand as though to a rock face. I tried to land both feet on the ground but the greasy dancefloor took my legs from under me and my chin took my entire body weight in the ensuing fall. Suffice it to say I welcomed in the new Millennium with ten stitches on the chin. For some reason the doctor used black thread, not a great look during party season.
Predator or prey, you can rest assured that come early January the party animals will be back in hibernation, forced into hiding by the rumour that there’s mortifying video evidence in circulation. We will emerge only to buy Alka Seltzer, unrecognisable in tracksuits and anoraks.