The 23-year-old man sitting next to me at our office Christmas do didn't mean to be insulting, I'm sure.

But I still didn't take too kindly to him when he told me I looked just like his Aunt Jane.

"That's hardly a compliment," I snorted.

"No, no, she's really nice," he stuttered. "She was a champion badminton player in ... er ... when she was a bit younger than you."

"And how old do you think Jacqui is?" chipped in a colleague, who had gleefully noticed my displeasure.

The young man, now red with embarrassment, hesitated, before coming out with a diplomatic: "37."

Even though I am slightly older than this, I still wasn't happy. He obviously really thinks I'm in my mid-40s and thought he could redeem himself by knocking off a few years.

Not surprisingly, I didn't pull my cracker with him that evening.

Office Christmas parties are usually strange occasions, in my experience.

You can spend years working with people and feeling completely comfortable with them in a familiar environment but, as soon as you add glad rags and alcohol to the equation, you can become like strangers and have to bond all over again.

I've had several strained conversations with desk buddies out of context that have begun with: "So, what are you doing for Christmas?"

Do they really care, I wonder? Do I really care about telling them? Will I have to ask the same of them?

It's an equally sad sign if you end up talking shop with each other, even though most of us gravitate towards this because you soon find out that there's little else you have in common.

The danger is, of course, that you all end up drinking too much in the belief that this will somehow make the party go with a swing. And this, usually, is when the trouble begins.

I'm sure my 23-year-old colleague would have been far more careful with his words had he not been so well oiled. Unfortunately for him, I was unforgivingly sober.

To be fair, I think I've probably insulted a few fellow workers when I've been razzled at past office events.

The trouble is, you can never really tell just how awful you've been until weeks later, when you realise that people are cold-shouldering you or not offering to make you a tea when the kettle has boiled or not including you in the birthday cake offerings.

It can then seem too late to apologise. Even if you tried, colleagues would deny being likened to Hitler has had any effect on your working relationship.

The other sort of embarrassing behaviour is when you notice two of your colleagues becoming overly intimate with each other, resulting in the Christmas Party Snog.

This can happen in full view of everyone, which seems to make all but the snoggers feel awkward.

Or it can happen in the relative privacy of the corridor outside the ladies' toilets but then quickly becomes the main gossip of the evening, if not the whole year, until the next Christmas bash.

I'm relieved to be able to say that, to my knowledge, I have not been a participant in the Christmas Party Snog.

And anyone who chooses to contradict this, especially anyone who remembers what I did at the 1995 office knees-up (worryingly, I don't) would need to have photos to prove it.