After two years of working his jazzy socks off as a teacher, Ted has set off around the world for a year, with the advance warning that he ‘won’t even be back for Christmas drinks’. We floated a few ideas for a leaving do last week, some of which were fraudulently fancy; saying goodbye to Ted in a smart London cocktail bar would be like throwing the Sultan of Brunei a birthday party at Pizza Hut. In the end we decided to do something traditionally Ted and spend his last evening playing flip cup at Kenny’s house.

Flip cup is a competitive drinking game. Two teams face each other on either side of a table – ideally placed outside or in a kitchen as it gets quite messy. In front of each team member is a plastic party cup filled with a finger of beer, the contents of which each person must in turn drink and flip over with one hand by balancing the cup on the edge of the table. The quickest team to finish wins. The beauty of the game is that any group can be brought down by just one weak player, switching the fortunes of the teams and upping the competitive thermometer to popping point.

I challenge the most placid person to play this game and not unearth a screaming, hollering, beer-bottle lobbing, inner competitive demon. Sometimes experience just isn’t enough: I’ve witnessed the best flip-cuppers in the business reduced to hapless, butterfingered morons under the pressure. Though for Ted – being a fan of organised fun, drinking and competitive games – flip cup is a firm favourite, and he throws himself into each game with the dedication of a rowing cox, delivering a stream of fiery encouragement to his fellow team mates.

Mental Jenny turned up at around 9. She too left for New York this week. To remind us of her imminent departure, she was wearing a foam Statue of Liberty hat and sang the chorus line of Empire State of Mind on a continuous and steadily more drunken and slow-motion loop throughout the course of the evening. By midnight she was moving around the flat as if suspended in a vat of treacle and eventually disappeared off to Kenny’s room to pass out on his bed still wearing her headpiece.

After the first flurry of games had finished, Ted picked up Kenny’s guitar and began to serenade the room, before circulating and delivering meaningful, teary-eyed goodbyes to everyone, including the people he didn’t really know. Then a group of girls no-one other than Kenny seemed to know turned up at midnight, one of whom began kissing him in the doorway:

‘Who are they?’ I asked Tanya

‘Absolutely no idea. Maybe he’s gone and got a new set of girlfriends or something’

We watched as Ted began to teach the new arrivals how to play flip cup, and I had a sudden vision of him standing in an Argentinian bar, attempting to explain his favourite drinking game to a group of people in faltering Spanish. I went to give him a final goodbye hug, then made my way home (via the chip shop).

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