I left Tim, the gay dog-walker, chatting to the George Clooney look-alike Macdoctor, who he apparently knows, and went in search of Sara, the hostess.

Partly, I wished to extricate myself from three-way conversation which had become three way when Tim interrupted my entirely innocent conversation with Macdoctor (I'd been asking him if I looked like the sort of person who might have hidden files when Tim chimed in with: "What a fabulous idea of Sara's ... provides the perfect opportunity to get out the house and flirt with the Macdoctor") and partly to find out if Sara was dispensing alcohol and proffering canaps, or was holed up somewhere with Tony, the urban housecleaner, for whose benefit I suspected the whole "office party for people who work from home" had been laid on.

I half expected to find them in some sort of "it's an office party so it's allowed" type clinch in the kitchen or the hallway.

I hadn't expected to find them in the bedroom.

Nor had I expected them to be in the bedroom because Sara was feeling much the worse for too many champagne cocktails and Tony was getting her to have a lie down.

I passed James, the urban househusband, or rather out-of-work actor who looks after children while waiting for big break, while hotshot solicitor wife keeps him in publicity photos, on the way down.

He'd arrived half an hour earlier after being released from day job and had not yet caught sight of the hostess.

"Have you seen Sara?" he asked.

In reply, I nodded towards the bedroom and whispered; "She's in there with Tony."

After all, I reasoned, Sara is obsessed with the idea it is ingrained in some law that it is everyone's right to have an office party and I'm sure there's a clause somewhere in that law that stipulates that, in order to be tax deductible, office parties must yield at least one good rumour.

I went downstairs to find that Clooney, the Macdoctor, was not only a magician in the field of G4s but also in the kitchen.

With his problem pre-empting mind, he'd realised that while alcohol was flowing, food to mop it up was not - there was a pile of French bread on the work surface and the hostess was nowhere to be seen.

So he'd turned on the oven, rolled up his sleeves and was producing crostini with the speed of a broadband internet connection.

"I liked your article, 'An Englishwoman's Home Is Her Company Headquarters'. Olive and sundried tomato or pesto and mozzarella?" he said, referring to an article I'd written about the growing number working women whose office is a laptop on the kitchen table, while offering me something to eat.

"Do you read women's magazines a lot?" I asked, as he came and stood very close to me. "Mmmm, very nice," I said, referring to the olive and sundried tomato thing.

"You look very nice yourself," he said, putting down a tray of mushroomy stuff. And somehow different, out of work."

"More relaxed," I said, relaxing and then tensing up again, when my mobile, which I'd forgotten to switch off, began ringing. "I'm sorry but I've got to go," I said to Clooney, once I'd taken the call.

"The Rugrats are apparently sick and the childcare (husband Thomas) can't cope."

"Well, I'll see you the next time your computer crashes," he said, giving me a longish peck (if there is such a thing) on the cheek.

"Happy Christmas ..."