LOOKING back, I still feel sorry for Adie Maguire. He was a lovely, unassuming bloke and he had all the best intentions in the world.

His parents had a nice house up posh Nessfield Drive and they were away for the weekend. So, like any other 17-year-old in the early 1980s – and, I imagine, today – he threw a party.

Adie was on the fringes of our group in the sixth form, the arty, literary bunch. (We were hippies really. We liked real ale and Sopwith Camel and thought we were interesting and alternative because we could recite the first six lines of Ginsberg’s Howl. The other groups included the scientists/mathematicians – dullards – and the sporty, outdoorsy types – energetic dullards.)

He invited us all up to his house on the Friday night. We brought cider and bottles of Newcastle Brown and a packet or two of Woodbines, so how the hell his place looked like Beirut on the Saturday morning is anyone’s guess.

First of all, someone pulled off the louvered cellar doors. So far, so fixable. But this was just the beginning of a catalogue of disasters throughout the night.

The main record player in the living room blew up, and shortly afterwards the replacement that was brought down from Adie’s parents’ bedroom had its speakers blown (a cassette player with hardly any volume had to be drafted in).

Then the living room curtain rail was accidentally pulled down and the hessian curtains ended up in twin heaps. Two lamps were tipped up and the bulbs blown, numerous bottles and fags were spilled onto the shagpile carpet and the police came twice.

By the time the microwave oven exploded – a beer can ring-pull had been left inside – suspicions were rife that most of it was being done on purpose.

A quarter of a century later and I imagine Adie still hasn’t found out who was to blame. I’d have hated to have been him when his mum and dad got back. But it was a memorable party, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.

As we get older, unless you’re a Hell’s Angel or a swinger, one hopes the parties get more sophisticated and civilised.

When I was a kid, my gran and granddad’s parties were raucous but good-natured affairs. Unfettered by drink-driving laws, everyone turned up merry after closing time, drank, sang and played accordion, then drove home even merrier.

A few years afterwards and my mum and dad’s parties were equally energetic. But they had saucy games, cans of Party Sevens that they had to open in the bath, and I don’t think that they saw the play Abigail’s Party, but they really did play Demis Roussos on the Studio 6 stereogram.

There were breadsticks, dips and cheesy footballs, Twiglets, peanuts and pretzels and hardly anyone drank wine. For the lads it was Double Diamond or Younger’s Tartan Bitter and for the lasses Babycham, advocaat or snowballs – basically Babycham with advocaat.

These days parties are way more sophisticated. Having been to loads of them (but never having really thrown one myself – as a kid or an adult), here are my top five amateur tips for a great do.

1. Food. I went to a party last weekend and the hostess is one of the best bons viveurs I know (the host, however, knows only what béchamel sauce is). She laid on jambalaya, curry, cheese-filled what-nots and platters full of nibbles. Now, the thing with party guests is that they expect food, so they don’t eat any tea before they come out. In fact, they are more likely to have a drink beforehand so that they are ‘in the mood’ when they get there. They then come and devour most of the nibbles on offer. My advice to discourage these tight gits from coming to future parties is not to do any food. They will turn up, already half-cut, expecting scran and when they don’t get any, they will peak too soon, end up honking in the rhododendron bushes and have to leave early by expensive taxi. And good riddance, the tightwads.

2. Booze. Don’t supply too much. Some, obviously, but you are supplying a great house and some smooth sounds (see number four) so you don’t have to do it all. I think the days of people bringing along bottles that people have brought along to their parties and never drunk have long gone (Noilly Prat, De Kuyper Cherry Brandy and Blue Bols, stand up and be ignored). If you do supply too much hooch , people will stay later and they won’t leave until every drop has been wrung out of every last bottle (apart from the aforementioned three).

3. Surroundings. A few carelessly-thrown Ikea pine scatter cushions, one or two scarves over lamps and a tapestry rug alongside a low coffee table strewn with art books do not memorable party surroundings make. I went to one a month ago and the two hostesses had hired a bayside café and done it up with balloons, streamers and tinsel, with party food on paper plates. It was brilliant and suited their personalities perfectly. If you don’t want to spend the whole of the next day cleaning up, cover everything in heavy-duty plastic, available from your nearest builders’ merchants. It won’t be very atmospheric, but at least it will say, ‘Come and party, dude.’

4. Music. Possibly the most important thing. You can sit around with nothing more to drink than tepid milk, but if you have Eliminator by ZZ Top, it’s a party. Of course, nothing beats having a live band in the house (remember The Young Ones with Motorhead, Dexy’s et al all performing in their kitchen?). So if you have a mate in a group, bribe him with free drink to appear. This is acceptable because unlike most non-musicians, who will just stay and talk about football or politics or religion, a musician will be the last to leave a party anyway, playing into the wee hours to an audience of two, so you might as well reciprocate in kind. Apart from ZZ Top, other essential music is all of the Now That’s What I Call Music LPs, Beatles, Stones and other 60s stuff and, of course, Erasure, The Village People and any 70s disco, because if drunk people at a party at the end of the night don’t turn violent, they turn musically gay.

5. Guests. If you want a memorable party, invite friends who have split up acrimoniously and have new partners but don’t tell their former partners. This is always good for drunken mid-party tantrums, bitch fights or even silly, middle-aged male happy slapping. Rugby/football players and diehard feminists don’t really go hand-in-hand and neither do paintball/BB gun enthusiasts and Guardian readers, or BNP supporters and anything with warm blood.

But the best party, really, is you, your loved one, some decent scran, a couple of bottles of Leffe Blond and some great old vinyl on the Dansette. Or even better, the above but without the loved one.

Remember, when you party alone, no one can see you dance.