Celebrity Salad

Vin lives just off Green Lanes, near Finsbury Park. Even though I’d seen him recently, I felt pretty bad for ditching on the Ship’s birthday bash, so I gladly accepted the invitation to his Christmas meal. The house is lovely, with lots of communal space. It felt very homely to sit at the table, reading the letters page of New Scientist, as Helen made a cake and Hammond assembled mince pies. We drank champagne and watched Arsenal v Liverpool. I hadn’t seen Anna, Martin or Dave O since what felt like forever, and I really enjoyed catching up with them - even Martin, who I pretend to hate. Mulled wine followed, and then Celebrity Salad, a game.

1. Find a hat, some paper, some pens, and a watch that counts seconds.
2. Divide into two equal teams, appoint a scorer for each.
3. Each player writes five names of noteworthy people on slips of paper and tosses them into the hat.
4. Players take turns, alternating between teams, of one minute to get their team mates to guess the names pulled out of the hat, with the following restrictions:
· ROUND 1 – Players can say anything except what is written on the cards.
· ROUND 2 – Normal charades rules.
· ROUND 3 – A one-word clue, delivered with no actions.
5. One name guessed is one point scored.
6. No name pulled from the hat can be skipped.
7. A name is ‘live’ until successfully guessed, at which point it is put outside the hat until the next round.
8. A name pulled out of the hat, but not correctly guessed by the end of the turn is ‘live’ and goes back into the hat.
9. A round goes on until all names in the hat have been correctly guessed.
10. At the end of the round, all names go back into the hat for the next round.
11. After three rounds, the team with the highest score wins.
12. The non-guessing team are responsible for making sure the guessing team and the clue-giver are within the rules of the game.

It was great to see Chris Sewards and John Gripton too. Good times. Port followed, then Jack Daniels, and eventually stupor.