When neighbours in a quiet suburban street drew back their curtains to find aliens had landed they were not entirely surprised.

Shiny green aliens clambering out of their spaceship are not the first unusual sightings in Harrington Road, Brighton.

For the last 12 years, Marco Holt has hosted a themed party to reunite old friends from Brighton University.

But rather than becoming more demure with age, they have abandoned dinner parties in favour of childish antics.

In recent years, neighbours have been witness to cowboys and Red Indians dancing round a totem pole, footballers catapulting themselves off see-saws and a group of grown men stripping naked.

This year's party, Space Odyssey 2001, provided the perfect setting for the thirty-something graduates, who all belonged to the university canoe club, to unleash their juvenile tendencies. Mr Holt, a design engineer, said: "It's a tradition. People travel from all over the world to attend my Big Bash. We dress up according to a theme, play silly games and just relive our student days.

"We always invite the neighbours, although they usually say it is not really their thing. The nights can get a bit mad but we have never had any complaints."

This year's party games included an alien abduction, where one guest was carried off down the road "to another planet" and the annual fire breathing show.

The tenth anniversary Big Bash was a Back to School party where Mr Holt and three friends performed a Full Monty-style striptease in the back garden in front of 100 spectators.

Mr Holt said: "I got my hat stolen but it went amazingly well. I was slightly surprised, though, to see some of the neighbours who said they were going away hanging out of the window watching. One neighbour in her fifties told me I'd made her day."

While the neighbours have enjoyed Mr Holt's wild parties from afar Big Bash virgins, as he calls them, have been rather shocked.

In fact, following the strip show, two of the participants were dumped by their girlfriends.

Yet the graduates have refused to give up their annual party and have even managed to incorporate the new responsibilities of marriage and children into the parties.

This year, one man turned up with his baby strapped to his chest beneath a shirt covered in fake blood in a re-enactment of a scene from the film Alien.