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I ask because it鈥檚 a willed act. Whereas a beard thrives on neglect, a moustache must be cultivated, and in turn it transforms a man鈥檚 (or a woman鈥檚) social persona 鈥� upstages the rest of his face. It begins, in subtle ways, to take over. What鈥檚 more, Dave has raised a bandito, a Merv the Swerve, a Nick Cave. Any longer and he could twiddle.

鈥淎re you putting wax on it?鈥� inquires Nick, innocently. Well this issue hasn鈥檛 arisen because it鈥檚 a newly sprouted, sponsored moustache, grown to tackle prostate cancer. When Dave was working in Australia, the natural home of this style of facial enhancement, he was clean shaven.

Which wasn鈥檛 a problem. 鈥淥ver there you鈥檙e judged on the size of your ute.鈥� I mishear this as 鈥渦ke鈥�, which leads me to question everything I鈥檝e been told about life Downunder. Dave explains that a ute is a kind of low-slung pick-up, useful for transporting one鈥檚 slab. 鈥淥f concrete?鈥� No, beer. A case of 38 stubbies. Ah, stubbies 鈥� I can take it from here.

KSS is a sports specialist, and so the conversation moves naturally on to the subject of smuggling alcohol into stadiums. Alex recommends injecting a melon with vodka to create a natural and healthy cocktail. Sue talks about the construction of beer snakes 鈥� a communal activity in which the crowd tries, and inevitably fails, to create an 鈥淥uroboros鈥�, which is a tube of plastic glasses long enough to encircle the entire ground.

As we鈥檙e now about four pints into the evening, this topic leads naturally to amusing statements in foreign languages. Alex mentions the Italian colleague who becomes upset when anyone says they鈥檝e had a panini for lunch 鈥� 鈥淥ne panino, two panini!鈥� Nick talks about the colleague who told him the German for glove is 鈥淗andschuh鈥�, meaning a shoe you put on your hand and I chip in with the friend who asked an Italian passer-by for directions to the loos (gabinetti) and ended up asking him to show her the way to the prawns (gamberetti).

From there we lurch to the subject of Christmas trees. This, it seems, is a competitive business at KSS, each 鈥渂ench鈥� constructing its own miniature version. Sue: 鈥淟ast year one team did a chav tree. It was topped with a Burberry cap.

They made mini Burberry handbags and gold bling 鈥� I imagine obsidian and gold-leaf packets of Lambert & Butler to complete the effect, by which time the designers have started to swap puzzle drawings, including old favourites such as Mexican-riding-a-bike, giraffe-passing-a-window and koala-bear-climbing-a-tree.

Dave then draws a picture of David Cameron鈥檚 dream house, complete with PVs, ground-source heat pump, windmill, biomass boiler and a very rude comment about the Toyota Prius. Well, I guess that was just the moustache talking.