Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice?

After 26 years of self-imposed silence and non-communication, I am preparing to take part in the second school reunion of the year.

Just three months on from the first get-together, an inner circle of “we were friends, then we weren’t friends, in fact some of us were never friends in the first place, but we’re friends now” are planning to share some Christmas cheer.

By mutual consent, we think there is still plenty of muck to rake over and potential fresh mulch to be created.

This time round, following the formality of a 21st century spa hotel rendezvous, we are having an old-school house party which will provide far greater scope for ridiculous late-night drinking, confessions, and, quite possibly, tears and a fight. It will be like the film The Big Chill, a coming together of disenchanted old chums, although hopefully no one will die between now and Saturday because that would really take the sparkle off the Christmas tree.

To encourage outpourings of adolescent nostalgia, I have devised a brilliant reunion “party game.”

It’s my own version of Name That Tune, loosely based on the legendary quiz show starring Tom O’Connor in which contestants were invited to “name that tune” having been given a teasing clue and a played a couple of notes on a piano. This was a golden era for telly quizzes, such as the Fred Dinenage-fronted Gambit.

My spin on the Name That Tune – which is a kind of Name That Tune meets Simon Bates’s Our Tune concept – works thus: everyone has been asked to search in their lofts and bring along a single, or singles, from our 80s school days.

The single should be the song that captures the era for the individual, sending goosebumps up their back and quickening their pulse. Perhaps it’s the song they had their first cigarette to.

It might just be a tune that condenses a spectrum of feelings and memories. Maybe it’s a “break-up” song (lots of hearts were broken then, remember – virtually nightly). Or is it the song that revives memories of a “Mrs Robinson” moment during the Lower Sixth?

(I really hope someone had one of the latter, but I can’t believe they wouldn’t have confessed by now. Still, fingers crossed.)

On the night, each person will be invited to play their song, possibly with a cryptic introduction. The hushed ranks will wait for the crackle and screech of the needle being dropped on to vinyl and will have to name the song and the band (and maybe the year, just to keep anoraks like me really on our toes).

The person who names the song first wins something brilliant, like first dibs at the Frazzles.

One of our number, Joe, who has kindly agreed to host the bash (actually, I think he was rather steamrollered into it, but he’s a City lawyer so no one feels guilty), has dusted down and refurbished his Dansette record player for the night. Remember when people used to walk into record players at parties and the music went? We will be able to do that.

I was doubly excited about Name That Our Tune because I knew I had a brilliant record collection in the 80s.