In the UK, we don't get 'high on life', we get high on booze - and that's fine by me

Real high-on-life joy is so wholly un-British, we tend to leave the messy business to theatrical types, says Grace Dent

Illustration by Ping Zhu

Behind the stage at a recent X Factor live final – I was appearing on its ITV2 after-show spin-off – I was alarmed by a ferocious rumbling. It wasn't simply the mournful din of a Cowell protégé giving "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran a good drubbing. It was louder, squeakier and multi-voiced.

A group of teenagers, clad in fake neon chrysanthemum-covered hats, hot pants, string vests and other backing-dancer garb – were waiting to run on stage and dance with the American singer CeeLo Green. I say "dance with", more accurately it would be "dance behind", because CeeLo Green is a spherical lump of a man and sudden movements are not the meat and bones of his cabaret. Pithy, yes, but let's be honest, if he dropped dead while attempting a light side-shuffle we could hardly stand about saying "Well, there's your CeeLo Green gone. Sheesh… and he seemed in such rude health."

Thankfully, CeeLo had employed a squad of young, bendy-limbed sorts to titivate the stage. They'd clearly spent a good deal of the previous week learning, perfecting, practising and fretting over this routine, and now their three-minute stint live on prime-time ITV was here. Among these dancers, a rather mesmerising hubbub began to unfold by the side of the stage. There was hugging and whooping and praying. There was leaping, back-flipping, and mantra-chanting.

"I'm sorry about them," said a producer, who looked like a man who probably carried emergency Migraleve, "Would you like to stand somewhere quieter?" "No," I replied, "I can't stop looking at them. They're absolutely high on life." And they absolutely were.

They’ll inform you they’re ‘doing dry January’ in saintly, suffering tones

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This wasn't tepid, pedestrian glee. Not the type that surrounds, say, someone in the office announcing, "Guys, I've been experimenting with beetroot in my coeliac-friendly brownies, I've laid them out by the photocopier." Neither was it flailing around, sweating, off-your-face-at-2am-on-Saturday glee. Nobody was making rash promises to write a sitcom with anyone, or biting a lump of skin off their mouths while sharing out powder laced with a crushed Bob Martin medium-sized dog-worming tablet.

No. It was clean, unfettered hysteria over how truly wonderful life was. It made me think that somewhere – nestling within all of us – is the possibility to feel this naturally good. Obviously, it may require four solid days of rigorous exercise, acute worry, aching gluts and a stint of pirouetting beside a man who resembles an Oompa Loompa, but nevertheless, the magic is, feasibly, within.

But real high-on-life joy is so wholly un-British, we tend to leave the messy business to theatrical types. We are excellent at giddy-on-a-bottle-of-primitivo drunk, whereas bear-hugging each other, high on the joy of, say, "watching a pleasant Christening", is just weird. I say this, clearly, as we move ever closer to the most wonderful time of the year, which in an increasingly agnostic country has little to do with God's splendour, and much to do with drinking salted caramel liqueur in a half-pint glass and suddenly finding the Michael Bublé TV Christmas Special really quite awesome.

Christmas Day is hardwired into many of our minds as the epitome of high-on-life, as it's the only day where drinking Martini Asti Spumante before 6am and being blisteringly good pre-breakfast company is cool by everyone. Try that shit in February and your friends will set up a separate WhatsApp group to decide who is buying the giant butterfly net and who is wrestling you into the van.

Still, I have no problem with the boozy British version of "loving life". If you require a terrifying snapshot of how Britain would be if we attempted to be more like California, then wait for "Sober January", the traditional part of our year where lemmings all over the country pledge to be "dry" for the full 31 days, greeting their post-Christmas credit card bills and broken boilers with crystal-clear clarity.

You can spot these people easily, around day six, by their pinched expressions and martyr's demeanours. And also, as they'll inform you they're "doing dry January" in 77 different Facebook updates, employing saintly, suffering tones, almost as if they're trekking the El Camino de Santiago barefoot delivering transplant organs. Not merely drinking a bit more Robinsons Lemon Barley than usual.

"I've never felt better," they'll tell you, on about day 19, eyeing your glass of gavi like Nosferatu sensing you're premenstrual. "No seriously," they say, "I wake up every morning feeling so energised. I am seriously high on life right now." They say the "high on life" part in the sort of defeated voice you might use to call work from a stationary commuter train after damp twigs left you stranded four miles outside Tring.

This is far from a good type of "high on life". It's not high on frickin' life like CeeLo Green's singing whooping dancers. It's just diarised misery. I have bought myself a course of wine-tasting classes running right throughout January. Any other way of dealing with the bloody month, I feel, is completely unpatriotic.

@gracedent