The steamy room reverberated to the subversive sounds of alternative 80s music – The Clash, The Southern Death Cult, The Psychedelic Furs and Wham’s cutting-edge Club Tropicana (“Fun and sunshine/There’s enough for everyone”).

We had been at it for an eternity, bathing in nostalgia’s soothing waters, giving ourselves body and soul to the bacchanalian moment, manically cutting the rug while knocking back a heady cocktail of Champagne, Guinness, Cosmopolitans, lager, vodka and pretty much anything classified as alcohol.

We were young again. We could do this all night. We were going to party like it’s 1999.

The temperature continued to soar and the large drinks table was moved to one side to open up a space in which to showcase our old-school hip hop moves, moshing and deconstructed moonwalking.

Gasping for breath, party-goers flopped outside on to the suspended first-floor terrace (“Only three at a time,” warned Joe, our host. “It was put up by my Polish builders”). Some rebels sucked on ciggies, safe in the knowledge that their parents wouldn’t find out.

Flipping heck, no one had gone at it like this was for years, possibly decades. Surely it must have been nearly midnight.

Swallowing hard and struggling to be heard over a blaring 12-inch version of Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, I shouted out: “What time is it?!”

I remembered dinner had been booked for 7.30pm. We’d missed it, just grooved on through and forgotten to eat. This was wild. Like being young.

“It’s ... hang on ... err ... it’s 4.30.” said DG.

“Four-thirty? Four-thirty? Mental,” I said.

“Yeah, 4.30. That’s 4.30 in the afternoon,” said DG. “We’ve only been going for an hour-and-a-half.”

Thus it was that the first ever Christmas reunion party for the Class of ’85, the first in nearly 30 years, began in the manner of all those other Christmas parties several decades ago: in total carnage.

Following our late summer get-together, in which old chums met for the first time since Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson topped the charts with I Know Him So Well, a select few came together again for this festive do.

Joe, a lawyer with a liberal attitude to neighbourhood noise abatement, laid on peanuts, Champers and half of M&S’s entire stock of canapes and ready meals at his home in north London.

The event was planned as an all-nighter, only starting around three-ish. Clearly, people would need to pace themselves if we were to make it to Final Score. Oops.

Unfortunately, we had “form.”