The '80s are back, and it's terrible

I’VE been invited to a party!

Unfortunately, this year’s Champion festive bash is an ‘80s-themed-do, meaning chances are I’ll have to go in fancy dress, and the problem is most '80s characters tend not to just drive cars, but wear them like part of their outfit.

Most people boring enough to hire a car for their Christmas do usually go for a Hummer that’s lined with five miles of mini-bars and cheap lighting, but I usually try – and fail – to do things a bit more tastefully.

I tried once for months to get a Jag XJ12 (Google it) at my disposal for a party, but ended up giving up and going for a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow instead, before the hire company changed its mind. My grand arrival that night was courtesy of Merseyrail, so I’m determined to do it properly this time.

Anything too flashy is out for starters, so Knightrider, the Ferraris from Magnum P.I, Ferris Bueller’s Day Out and Miami Vice and anything Roger Moore drove are an expensive no-go area. I quite fancied Gene Hunt’s Audi Quattro but the thought of drunken thirtysomethings screaming “Fire up the Quattro!” at me is just too much.

I could go all Bodie and Doyle and handbrake-turn a Capri for the night, as I know a friend with several, but the resort’s roads are a bit slippy at this time of year. Chances are I’d spend my Christmas party in someone’s front garden, having powerslided off a wet roundabout. Just like the old days.

The best ever fancy dress costume I resorted to was Darth Vader – I had a really bad throat that night – but despite my ambitions to win something for the second time in my life I think turning up in an X-Wing Fighter might be a tad ambitious.

There is always the opposite end of the ‘80s spectrum, but that would mean dressing up as Morrissey, arriving by bicycle and spending the entire night pretending that I’m a vegetarian with a girlfriend in a coma. No thanks.

I think my only option is just to give up, take my own car into town, and pretend I’ve gone dressed as whatever 80s screen star it happens to project onto my Christmas-weary self.

That means I’ll be going as Mr Bean, then…