The eight party season commandments

Whether it’s mingling over mince pies, sipping lukewarm Prosecco in the office or an all-night, sequin-clad bender, PARTY SEASON is no doubt a thing in your life right now.

But surviving the festivities can be a challenge. So hooray for our esteemed panel of Late Night Woman’s Hour guests; a gaggle of professional partygoers from party planner Fran Cutler to former '3am girl' Bryony Gordon. Here are their rules to party by, whether you want to throw one, thrive at one or even just survive one…

“The biggest tip of all has got to be a free flowing bar,” says Fran Cutler, BFF to Kate Moss and party planner extraordinaire. “Free drinks all night - and it can NEVER run out. That’s the secret.”

“I agree on the booze,” says Zing Tsjeng, who edits Vice’s Broadly, “and crucially it has to be free.

“The party stops when people start having to make corner shop runs. Then the ‘blue plastic bag brigade’ come in and all they want to do is drink Red Stripe, stop the Sugababes and put on intelligent dance music at 4am - never what anyone wants.” Which brings us onto…

“If you haven't got good music, you haven’t got a party,” says Fran, who shared her top 10 tracks with us.

“It's got to have a lot of thought and it's got to be the predictable tunes that everyone wants to hear. Start off quite slow and build up – the warm up DJ cannot come in playing banging house music at 8 o clock.”

Zing adds: “All you need is [someone] playing Britney. You might think the coolest parties shouldn’t be playing Blur and Pulp, but they really should, because that's the stuff that everyone remembers.”

“You’re almost like the curator of a museum,” says Fran. “You have to put people together and make sure it works.

“I organised my friend [designer] Riccardo Tisci from Givenchy’s 40th in Ibiza and Kanye sang. Everyone turned up, from Zac Efron to Justin Bieber and all the Kardashians. That was mega."

And don’t forget to get in early with your core crew to make sure they can attend.

“I’ve just had an invite for my friend’s 50th next June and I got that two months ago, so this person’s very, very keen,” says Fran. “He wants to make sure everyone is going and there are no excuses. It’s Noel Gallagher. He’s very, very organised.”

Throwing up on your new velvet shoes (or someone else’s) is never ideal, so our experts recommend not mixing your drinks, drinking lots of water and lining your stomach.

“Look after yourself,” says Bryony. “If you’re not going to eat there, always just shove a sandwich down you.

“As I’ve got older the party has to have food – otherwise I don’t remember it.”

“If everything gets very bad and overwhelming, just hide in a toilet stall,” says seasoned lavatory lurker Zing.

“The toilet stall is my safe space. You just sit down on the toilet seat and meditate, take a minute to gather your thoughts. I’ve hidden in a toilet for 20 minutes because a party was too empty and I was too anxious to go out and try and be that person.”

Writer and former diplomat’s wife Brigid Keenan once sought solace in the ladies at a co-worker’s fancy dress party.

“I'm so nervous [at parties] that I drink a lot at the beginning and then get completely legless. I went into the toilet to throw up and I could hear the people in there were friends, and had all heard me, so I just stayed in the lavatory for the rest of the night.

“Then at about two in the morning, when everyone else had gone, I had to flit along the embankment dressed as Mary Queen of Scots, trying to find a taxi.”

“There's a story about a girl who tried to climb over a fence to a London warehouse party,” says Zing, ”and she tore off her finger and left it dangling on top of the fence… Apparently she just continued partying.”

While that particular millennial’s commitment can’t be denied, there is a lot to be said for knowing when to call it a day.

“I’m usually always the last person standing - but I’ve learnt as I get older to bail out gracefully,” says Bryony, who wrote a column about her enthusiastic partying in her 20s.

“I'd sometimes just come straight into work and turn my escapades into witty copy, I was like the performing monkey. But if you're hurting yourself, that's no longer a good party - that's when you have to leave the party.”

“I hate it when you spend the next day worrying about what you've done and what you've said - you have ‘Hangxiety’ as I call it,” says Bryony.

“Waking up and going ‘oh god - did I say that, did I do that?' Often I was the only one who did do that thing. But I think at a party, you're excused. All party crimes can be pardoned.”

“I never feel guilty,” adds Zing. “No one should be forced to feel bad because they’ve had some fun.”

“You’re basically lying in your own sweat and self-loathing,” says Bryony. “However bad it feels, just get up, embrace the day. No one died. Hopefully. Go for a walk, blow the cobwebs out.”

Our panel of party experts also recommend avoiding hair of the dog. Seeking comfort in food, on the other hand, is totally fine.

“The last time I woke up at 2pm, I ordered two Deliveroos - both for myself,” says Zing.

“When I looked into the bag and there were two sets of cutlery I was like, ‘oh god. You don't understand anything about me at all'.”

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