A couple of weeks back, I was lucky enough to be asked to the GQ Men of the Year 2005 awards. Some of the highlights made the headlines - Charlotte Church's tussle with her mum, Burt Bacharach's choked acceptance speech - and I, for one, was grateful for the reminders. Because, for large chunks of the proceedings, quite a few of us were out on the balcony, having a fag and a glass of wine, rather than sitting at our tables enjoying the spectacle.
In theory, this was because the dining/function room at Covent Garden is a no-smoking zone, and we were all smokers who needed a nicotine fix to get us through the evening. In practice, the urge to exit the big party in search of the smaller, niche gathering is an addiction in itself, which the ban on smoking in public places happens to feed. I wasn't so much mad for a cigarette (officially, I don't even smoke any more) as mad to be included in the ne'er-do-wells' breakaway group. To be given the nod by your gang leader (rendezvous upstairs, 12 o'clock, Mr White on matches, Mr Orange bring the Marlboro Lights, everyone's responsible for their own Chablis) is a thrill in itself. And then to find yourself huddled, outside, with a band of strangers, doing something that is both bad for you and (at times like this) antisocial in the broadest sense of the word, is a pleasure that's hard to describe.
The key to parties has always been elite chasing: finding the room upstairs where the cool girls are sharing a bottle of Daddy's gin as opposed to the fruit punch - or getting to the after-after party and then into the inner sanctum at the after-after party and then into the roped-off bit in the inner sanctum. I've always been convinced that four-fifths of the appeal of cocaine is the nod-wink invitation to the bathroom, which instantly takes you back to team selection at school or being asked to dance at adolescent parties: you become one of the chosen, and that's a hard thing to give up. Isn't that why everyone starts smoking and drinking? Because someone you think is cool suggests that you might want to join in, and the alternative is social suicide. You may not remotely want what's on offer, but you have to be very well-adjusted not to want to be picked by your peer group, and you never really grow out of that. Which is why, the more stuff is banned in public, the more the elite-chaser is determined to find the secret corner or rain-soaked balcony where the exclusive thing is happening.
And it isn't just smoking and illegal substances and exotic off-menu cocktails that encourage the elite-chaser's worst instincts. We're all hooked on trying to find the smaller, secret happening: once we get somewhere, we need to be somewhere else. Honestly, it's madness.
