Life & Society
Shazia's week
Published 13 December 2007
Corporate Christmas parties are so horrific, it's a relief to be with 500 Germans
It's here. The wrath of the Christmas party has arrived. Christmas parties don't like me. I ruin their fun and sometimes even their lives. Last week was the first of a string of hedonistic horror movies. I drove up to the north of England, to a venue where the tables were lined up horizontally like in a school dinner hall, and along them sat the employees of a well-known high street fashion chain.
They were all wearing paper hats, had whistles round their necks and were popping crackers in each other's faces. They were inebriated to the extent that a manager was standing on top of the table trying to sell his own shoes to the highest bidder. It was 7pm and the show hadn't even started.
It's always the person in the highest position or with the highest salary who behaves the most outrageously. It seems to be a licence for reckless yet entertaining behaviour. The Christmas party became a write-off by 7.45pm. By this time the rather large, boisterous manager was also a write-off, ordering his staff (mainly young, compliant girls with orange faces and their hair scraped back into scrunchies - and who seemed to be used to obeying this man's orders) to drink more champagne."I've paid a thousand quid for this Krug. Bloody well drink it up, you animals," he said with grotesque affection.
It was then announced to the staff that the comedy show was about to begin, and that three comedians would be trying to unleash words on them. I sensed their disappointment as I walked on to the stage. I was not what they had ordered as suitable "entertainment" for their festive occasion.
They didn't want me banging on about solutions to racism, or the state of America, or political correctness. They wanted me to whip up 20 minutes of jokes about clothes. That's the thing about Christmas parties: all everybody wants to know and talk about is themselves and their workplace, and if it's not about them they get bored and trash the place.
I can't wait till the New Statesman Christmas party. No doubt the boss will dance on top of the dinner table and try to sell his employees copies of the magazine.
That was all last week.
I'm now in Arosa, Switzerland. Up here in the Swiss Alps, it's like the Christmas of our childhoods: snow, sledges, reindeer and horses ploughing people through the snow. There are rich people with no taste drinking champagne on the slopes while trying to ski at several hundred miles per hour. This is the first time in ten years I have seen real snow. It has had sufficient impact to make me build a snowman and throw snowballs at old people in the street.
That is the beauty of snow - it makes even adults act like five-year-olds. Snow has disappeared from the UK and has been replaced with postal strikes.
Tomorrow night I will be performing a show at the 16th Annual Arosa Humour Festival. The audience will be made up mainly of Swiss and Germans. I imagine that performing an hour of comedy in English to these people will have its ups and downs, but after the corporate party, I'm quite looking forward to 500 Germans.
Last night, however, I was taken aside by the festival organiser and specifically told: "This is a humour festival, not a comedy festival, so please adjust your performance accordingly. There is a difference between humour and comedy, and German comedy is still in development. Thanks for your understanding."
This was a euphemism for "don't be too funny - that doesn't fit into our agenda". So, basically, I am just going to remove all punchlines from my set and replace them with grabbing my breasts and pulling down my trousers. Rather like the corporate Christmas party.
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