Xmas party polls top Xmas polls poll shocker

It’s not shocking! But it's official! Xmas party polls top our Public Relations Professionals’ (PROs) Favourite Xmas polls poll list, 2006.

Britain’s battalions of brand publicists are unleashing Xmas party polls at a rate of more than 5 per day – that’s a whopping 35 per week, according to a simple arithmetic equation designed to patronise readers.

The festive party stories, meant to generate publicity in the nation's newspapers, radio airwaves and televisual broadcast beams, are thrashing lesser counterparts such as research-based stories about crap towns.

Here at your friendly neighbourhood Pop Culture Phrasebook, we've scaled the greasy PR pole to get a bird's eye view of the battle for Yule-time column inches. And we're proud to bring you some highlights from the blizzard of festive party stories that are bound to get you in the party mood. Fortunately, the findings are reasuringly trite and predicatable, so they won't tax your emotional or mental energy reserves:

• Bosses can be mean about giving workers money and time for Xmas partying, says GMI Europe
• People spend money at Xmas parties, according to Cornhill Direct
• Norwich Union reckons that hangovers from Xmas parties make you feel ill
• Cleaners attend less Xmas parties than some other workers, such as Xmas party organisers, says British Cleaning Council
• People have Xmas party antics such as flirting with colleagues, finds found Nandos
• Drunks lose phones when hammered, says T-Mobile
  

Digging deeper into the fascinating pop cultural phenomenon of the Xmas party PR poll story, the PCP made yet another jaw-dropping, knee-trembling, throat-parching discovery.

The word 'poll' was the number one most favouritist way to describe the sampling of consumer opinions on the subject of Xmas parties. 'Poll' easily beat lesser nouns 'survey' and 'research' - a whopping 66.6% of PRs favoured the four letter word to its lengthier counterparts.

PCP went to interview Poll at its home in Ashford, Middlsex. After several unsuccessful attempts to get Poll to answer the door, we shouted through the letter box, only to receive the following reply: "F*** off! I'm busy inserting myself into a press release. And another. And another. Uh, yeah, you like that don't you press release? Say my name, *****. I'm Poll Daddy, *****!"

Trying another tack, PCP spoke with the slick and dashing Mayfair publicist, Max Cliffe. Cliffe said: "Survey has become a dirty word in this town. Poll has more mass appeal; your ordinary man on the street has a mental age of a 13 year old - we're talking 70% of the population, here. That's why X-factor is such a hit. It's a small word - like Sun, and Star and Mirra - and that means it's easy to read. Research, on the other had, is more high brow, yet much more credible. But the truth is, there isn't a publicist in town that knows how to wield it's awesome power. Or how to spell it."