TOM UTLEY: The infuriating purpose each Christmas on the Utleys begins with smiles… and ends with blood on the carpet

The numbers get bigger every year, as our ever-growing family squashes round the table in a house that comfortably seats only six. Otherwise, it’s always the same in the Utley household, as Christmas Day draws to its close.

After weeks of planning and shopping for presents and food, the lunchtime banquet that has kept my wife busy since the first glimmer of dawn is over at last, having stretched well into the evening. The plates and the worst of the debris have been cleared away.

Now that blissful moment arrives when the youngest, exhausted after all the excitement, are bathed and tucked up in the travel-cots and camp beds that cover every square inch of spare floor space upstairs.

At long last we adults, bloated and slightly sozzled, can top up our glasses, put our feet up in front of the telly and enjoy a little peace. Except we never can.

For every Christmas, without fail, this is the moment a blasted son or a daughter-in-law chooses to bang on the table and issue the order: ‘OK, let’s play a game!’

Spoilsport

At this, every fibre of my being groans. But all my pleas for mercy are overruled.

‘Come on, Dad. Don’t be a spoilsport. We need you to make up our team.’

 It’s not that I have any fundamental objection to the parlour and board games beloved of our four sons and their other halves.

Indeed, I quite enjoy a civilised game of Charades, Boggle, Scrabble, Articulate or even Trivial Pursuit (though only when I win). What’s more, I’m proud to say that I was president of the chess club at school.

It’s just that no game played by the Utleys at Christmas, when we’re all full of turkey and booze, can ever be described as civilised.

The trouble is that apart from Mrs U, every one of my immediate family is fiercely competitive. (If you’re wondering where they get it from, I’m ashamed to say that I gave up playing chess after son number two started beating me; he was only eight at the time, and I just couldn’t bear the humiliation.)

This means that whichever game our young insist on playing, it is sure to spark bitter recriminations and wild allegations of cheating, with all of us accusing our opponents of making up the rules as they go along.

A day that began with smiles all round, and speeches of rapturous thanks for presents of novelty socks that we will never wear, is all but guaranteed to end with blood on the carpet.

This week, a survey confirms that in that respect, my lot are far from unique. Having questioned more than 2,000 Britons, researchers commissioned by Mattel, the toy and games company, find that 63 per cent of us have taken part in an initially friendly board game that soon became much less so.

Even more, 73 per cent, admit that games bring out their competitive side, with 23 per cent describing themselves as ‘extremely competitive’. Meanwhile, 46 per cent complain of cheating by friends or relatives, with more than a third saying that arguments have led to games being abandoned altogether.

The only surprise to me is that those figures are quite so low. To pick the obvious example, I can’t remember a single game of Monopoly that my family has played through to the end.

Ever since our boys first learned to play it, our games have had to be abandoned half-way through, when one or other of them has left the room in a huff or hurled the board and all its pieces onto the floor. For months afterwards, miniature silver irons, green houses and red hotels would turn up behind the radiator or under the sofa.

Unfamiliar

As for the guessing games loved by my children and their partners, I fear I’m often the first to stir up acrimony by complaining furiously of foul play.

Take the game that involves working out the name of a celebrity, living or dead, chosen by an opponent and stuck unseen to one’s forehead. How the devil is an old buffer like me expected to have heard of obscure American rappers, Second Division football managers or contestants on Love Island?

I reckon it affronts the spirit of Christmas to choose a name unfamiliar to some of the players – and I’m never afraid to say so, at the top of my voice.

So what if my opponents haven’t heard of the celebrity I’ve chosen – a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, say, or a former editor of the Financial Times? I say they jolly well ought to have done. And if they haven’t, well, don’t they deserve a taste of their own medicine? Before you know it, we’re all at each other’s throats.

Then there’s the infuriating moment in the middle of a board game, when a daughter-in-law suddenly announces a house rule, known only to her. ‘Sorry. The way we’ve always played it in my family is that you lose a turn when you throw a double two.’

It’s no good pointing out that it says nothing about that in the official rule-book. A full-blown barney invariably ensues.

But it’s worst of all when someone insists on playing a brand-new board game, unwrapped earlier in the day, which none of us has played before.

In even my most sober moments, I find it increasingly hard these days to remember the rules of any game we may have played at our last family gathering, only a few weeks earlier.

Maddening

As for trying to master a completely new game, in my befuddled state after Christmas lunch, I find it all but impossible. Is it just me, or do rules become ever more complicated as the years go by?

The truly maddening thing is that our sons and the mothers of our grandchildren seem to grasp those rules as soon as someone reads them aloud. Meanwhile, I’m still floundering after reading them again and again.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Dad. How many times do I have to tell you that you can only move three squares forward if the matrix card is in the ascendant and the arrow on the buzzle is pointing to the spy-circle?’

But you must forgive me if I sound a little jaded. My excuse is that to mark my birthday last week, my darling wife took it into her head to prepare a sit-down lunch for 24 people – 19 of them called Utley – though some of the young had to stand.

So it was that, while Mrs U shopped and cooked, I spent much of the week shifting furniture and erecting fold-away tables and camp beds, before dismantling them all when the last of our guests left on Sunday.

But since it’s our turn to do Christmas again this year, they’ll be back in force before the month is out, and we’ll have to go through the whole exhausting business again.

Just one observation. My birthday lunch seemed to pass in perfect domestic harmony, from beginning to end, with a good time had by all.

Could this have had something to do with the miracle that, on this occasion, we were spared any organised games?

In the name of peace and goodwill to all men, is it too much to hope that the young will show similar mercy on December 25?