Office party? Beware, you're on YouTube...

Uploaded to a computer near you: your office party shame, filmed by your friends

It's a horribly familiar staple of the office party scene. Drink flows and colleagues who should know better end up snogging in a stationery cupboard. Until recently, such pranks ended with no more than a few red faces the following day.

But the arrival of video mobile phones and websites where users can post the footage they've taken means that such humiliations can be seen, shared and mocked by millions.

According to a survey by T-Mobile, 1.4 million people would now use their phone to video colleagues at Christmas parties and upload scenes to the internet.

Another survey, to be published by the venue-finding service Conferences UK, found that as many as 7 per cent of office parties led to a warning or dismissal for an employee, with "improper sexual conduct" reported at a further 4 per cent.

Hundreds of compromising scenes from Christmas parties have already been uploaded to YouTube. The digital television channel, Fame TV, which was launched last month and performs a similar function, has been swamped with clips.

The clips can make painful viewing. In one, a woman drunkenly lists her boss's faults on camera, completely unaware that he is standing right behind her and can hear everything she says. In another, an inebriated man vomits into a pint glass, gives it a stir and carries on drinking. A third shows a blonde passionately kissing a female colleague for a dare.

Catherine Borowski, a London party planner, said: "It used to be a situation where you got the Christmas party photos developed at some point in the new year and edited out the ones that made you look stupid. Now it's a case of coming in the next day at 9am with a hangover and finding those photographs in your inbox. It's like a digital walk of shame."

One woman who knows how it feels on that walk is Chanelle Charlesworth, a graphic designer from Guildford. Ms Charlesworth, 28, kissed a female colleague at a work Christmas party earlier this month for a dare, but was "mortified" when a male co-worker sent footage of the kiss into Fame TV.

"My boyfriend didn't speak to me for about two days when he saw it," said Ms Charlesworth. "He absolutely hit the roof, saying he couldn't believe I'd be so stupid as to think nobody would play a practical joke with the footage."

Sealed with a big kiss

Chanelle Charlesworth was horrified after discovering that a drunken kiss she had with a female colleague was caught on a mobile phone and sent into Fame TV. She insisted that the kiss was only for a dare

Have socks, will dance

On YouTube, WooliesWonder-land06 uploaded a video of his 'big boss' at the Christmas party, describing him as a 'legend in the making'. That seems to involve crawling on the floor, breakdancing in socks, and getting doused with wine

Christmas cruise

A video uploaded to YouTube by a woman using the moniker 'powzy' stars a colleague who isn't afraid to express himself at the office party. Wearing hot pants, a sailor hat and a black feather boa, he struts suggestively around a pole