At the dysfunctional family company (here's an earlier episode...) there was nothing entered into with more gay abandon than dressing up. If they'd put as much effort into the business itself we'd all have been Lear jet owners and I'd have had a house on the bay at Biarritz.

As it was, come Melbourne Cup Day, (which for my non-Aussie readers is similar to the UK's Grand National, and we get a day off work) we were all summoned out into the garden just before lunch and each handed colourful horses' tails which we had to pin to our backsides. A track was painted into the grass by old man Jones whose only job appeared to be organising the painting of tracks, the signs which went up when we went off-site on cross-country pursuits, and ensuring the water fountain bottle was only changed once a month ("whether we've run out of water or not, young sir...").

The owner's wife - a chain-smoking harridan with a wharfy's roughneck voice - bellowed at us as we ran to, "move yer arses, go on yer bludgers!" while waving and cracking a stock whip which caused old man Jones to clutch his chest in what I thought to be as fine an imitation of a man who was about to have a heart attack as I've ever seen.

As I was galloping around the track one year, my tail flailing out behind me, the harridan trying to flick my backside with her viscious whip and nephew Kent staggering across the track in front of us resplendant in a clown's outfit, clutching a Crown lager, going, "neigh, neigh, horsey, hey, watch out there fella!") I wondered what were the hidden benefits of working here.

The final crunch came at Christmas. The orders came down from the wife, it's fancy dress and this is what you will wear.

They got me to dress up as a famous Aborigine boxer (no I can't remember his name but it was someone back in the 1920s, (so there's your quiz for today), complete with red satin shorts, boxing boots, big red shiny boxing gloves and my lilly white skin blacked up by old man Jones so I looked like a Black-and-White-Minstrel.

Each of the staff was ordered to board a public bus to the venue, the idea being that the omnibus's patrons would try to guess, with much glee, it was supposed by the management, exactly who we were.

I stepped aboard and tried to punch my ticket in the machine - no mean feat when you're trapped inside a pair of boxing gloves - but eventually managed it, turned around to walk to a seat and realised by the faces looking at me with the kind of silence you only hear before something momentous is likely to happen to you, also going to their Christmas party, was the Waramilijaratu Clan - every last single one of them.