At the Labour Party conference in Brighton, British Airways cancelled its planned "Casino" bash on the grounds that, as one Lloyds banker put it, "gambling with lives and profits may not be the right image for this year". Yet that didn't stop the British Airports Authority from throwing the booziest, happiest do of the year.

At about 10pm, I wandered doubtfully down a set of uninviting steps next to the Grand Hotel and stepped into the basement "club". A lobbyist and a business millionaire joined me. They looked about as comfortable among the dancing kids, who were thrusting and gyrating, as a Taliban mullah having to share a stage with Britney Spears. Green and red lights flashed above our heads, cigarette smoke blinded us, and throbbing music made conversation impossible. Worse still, the queue at the bar was four deep.

Gradually, a couple of tequilas soothed our nerves, and ties were loosened ever so slightly. "Martin" the millionaire was first to start tapping his feet; when "Staying Alive" screamed out of the speakers, Karl joined him. It was intoxicating. My heart, tight with talk of war and refugees, started to beat faster and faster. I didn't want to dance, I wanted to sip wine in the Metropole and dissect, discuss and worry about things out of my control. But the simple, throbbing beat was pulling us on to the dance floor, dragging our leaden feet towards joyous oblivion. One minute we were talking to Simon Fanshawe about Stonewall issues; the next, Karl turned round and said: "Stuff it. C'mon, let's boogie."

"Whooooo yeaaah!" the crowd cheered to an Abba song. "Keep it up!" we yelled, as Madonna got us all jumping - yes, jumping - up and down. Stephen Twigg was jigging around, bathed in smiles, shirt damp and tie gone, as he, too, punched the air with abandon. One of the heels on my new shoes broke after an hour under the strain. Unperturbed, I threw them, with a whoop, behind a giant flowerpot, and ran back on to the dance floor in my socks. I couldn't even bring myself to care that my socks had the letters "L" and "R" on them.

After two hours of non-stop dancing, a strong image flashed through my brain. It was the scene from the TV series The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which VIPs are sitting at tables and looking at a glowing red furnace that seems to be moving nearer and nearer. The MC for the evening gleefully says, "Welcome to the party at the end of the universe!", and a huge, drunken cheer goes up. The horror I felt at their inevitable, creeping doom and the compelling sight of men in bow ties and women in evening dresses ignoring their fate, even having a good time, has stayed with me, and that's how it felt at the BAA party. If the world was ending outside, who cared? We were all going out with a bang, not a whimper.

Staggering into the lobby of the Grand two hours later, wearing borrowed trainers, I should have felt slightly sheepish. But here, too, the atmosphere was one of high excitement. Above the delicate tinkling of a piano, drunken voices ravaged Beatles tunes. As far as the eye could see, political editors and members of "Tony's staff" swigged wine from bottles and giggled on each other's laps. Leaning across the piano was Trevor ("the sensible voice of the GLA") Phillips. "Lauren, babyyy," he roared. The pianist was "Godfrey", assistant to Patricia Hewitt, who each year entertains the press by playing through his extensive repertoire of naff show tunes and Sixties medleys. With no shame whatsoever, Trev and I screeched loudest of all to "Nooo Womaan, Noo Cryyyyyyyy".

"The ministers have been told not to have a good time," I shouted in his ear, as we paused for breath.

He smiled: "A bomb could be hurled in here at any moment. So let's just have fun, eh?"

This may or may not prove to be a "phoney war", but the atmosphere on Brighton's party circuit owed as much to Liza Minnelli and Vera Lynn as to Tony Blair and George Bush.

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