Black Meringue

Hag Dos

The words ‘stag do’ and ‘hen party’ make me shudder and feel slightly queasy.

Lager-fuelled lads wrapping each other in Clingfilm around lampposts. Shrieking girls in mini-skirts and the infamous L-plates necking nasty-coloured shots – and that’s before the stripper turns up. As if that’s not bad enough, why oh why are we not content to keep these kinds of frolics safely hidden within the borders of Great Britain? Now it’s more fashionable than ever to go and inflict ourselves on the rest of the world. Eastern Europe is popular. I’m sure that being invaded by swarms of drunken Brits vomiting on its cobbled streets was exactly what the former Eastern Bloc hoped for when it rid itself of communism. If I were them I’d close the gates again.

Anyway, rant over. The traditional hen and stag-do goers always look like they are having a ball, but if those kinds of shenanigans just aren’t for you here are a few other ideas on how to spend your last gasping breaths as a singleton – and not an L-plate in sight.

Hellfire Caves

Steeped in scandalous history, the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire will provide a spooky and mysterious venue for any brave revellers.

The caves were the meeting place of the original Hellfire Club in the mid-18th century, a group founded by notorious rake Sir Francis Dashwood – Chancellor of the Exchequer and reputed devil-worshipper. The Hellfire Club’s activities included Satan worship and orgies – putting modern-day hen and stag dos to shame, I reckon.

Nowadays the caves are open to the public and the Banqueting Hall is available for, well, banquets – if you dare. The candlelit hall, a cavern halfway down the warren of passages and caverns, lies close to a mausoleum and can seat up to 50 guests. In between courses you can explore the rest of the caves, and venture down to the River Styx (named after the legendary river that divided our world from the underworld), which winds its way through and under stalactites and mites. And while you’re strolling around you might bump into Paul Whitehead, a minor poet and steward of the Hellfire club. When he died, in 1774, he left his heart to Sir Francis “as a token of his warm attachment to the noble founder.” He also left £50 to provide for an urn in which his heart was to be deposited, and his ghost haunts West Wycombe to this day. Woooooooo!

Dinner in the banqueting hall can seat up to 50, although another option is the buffet, where you can have a maximum of 100 people. Prices start at £1,500. For more information contact West Wycombe Corporate Entertainment on 01494 883808 or info@westwycombe.co.uk.

Butlers in the buff

Alright, I slagged off strippers earlier, so I may have to backtrack slightly – but some parties just aren’t complete without a little bit of nudity. Butlers in the Buff claims to offer a sexy but classy alternative to the usual strip-o-gram, providing handsome, toned and charming men to wait on your every need. They seem to have missed out the words ‘gravity defying.’ The butlers usually dress in bottom-revealing pinnies, although also on offer are a whole range of costumes from kilts to gladiators. The dashing fellows will do anything from pouring champagne to washing up, and will take the stress out of entertaining. Phew – we’re sold.

A Butler in the Buff costs from £65 per hour to hire – for more information see www.butlersinthebuff.co.uk.

Whodunnit?

Picture the scene: you invite your closest old schoolfriends to get together for your hag do, and it’s all going swimmingly, when, suddenly, one of them is murdered! (cue dramatic music). Oxfordshire-based Art Deco Productions offers a murder mystery scenario especially for hag/hen dos among its wide range of themed mysteries and your job, should you choose to accept it, is to last the course and find out who dunnit. The company’s actors are all professionals and are guaranteed to make your night a blast, and if you’ve got friends who don’t know one another this is a sure way to get everyone to gel. All you need to do is find a venue, and the Art Deco team will provide the entertainment.

The Hen Party Murder Mystery caters for up to 20 guests, but other themes, of which there are lots, can take up to 80. Art Deco Productions will cater for hag dos but not stags. Prices start at £490 plus VAT. For more information see www.artdecoproductions.co.uk.

Bachelor pad

For those who live the high life and are after a weekend away that’s super suave, Kinnettles Country Manor in Scotland is the ultimate bachelor (or bachelorette) pad. You hire the whole thing out, and it comes complete with its own private chef and stunning grounds. It has a games room, poker room, a gigantic snooker table and, despite the building’s gothic appearance, all mod-cons: PS3s, Wiis, widescreen TVs and various other electrical bits to make you go ooh! And just in case dinner gets boring, even the dining room has a drop-down cinema screen and projector. “It had a free bar and fur and leather furnishings – it was a bit pimped!” says James Folkard, 28, from Warwickshire, who managed to wangle a weekend there.

Prices on application (we reckon it will be dirt-cheap), and for more information see www.kinnettles.com.

Get mediaeval

Boars Tooth Fight School practises historical European martial arts, and offers introductory mediaeval sword-fighting sessions for feisty hen, stag and hag parties.

“We wanted something not too girly as we were going on an evening of champagne cocktails and karaoke afterwards,” says Judith Boyce, who went on a hen do at Boars Tooth and subsequently took the sport up. “I’d done a little bit of fencing before but this was completely different. It’s full-on mediaeval sword-fighting – swinging a large blade round your head and thwacking someone in the face with it!

“The hen Lucy is into mediaeval history so we wanted to do something related to that,” she continues. “We hadn’t told her what we were doing though, so she got a bit of a shock! The session lasted two hours and the instructor Dave concentrated on about five or six moves, so we got going really quickly and felt like we could complete some proper routines instead of just waving our swords around.”

Boars Tooth provides all the relevant safety gear, including masks and gloves and various styles of swords. “I think the swords are made of nylon so you can’t actually run somebody through with them,” laughs Judith. “Whenever we tell people what we did for the hen do we get a great reaction – I think it’s the rarity value.”

Boars Tooth Fight School is based in London, Kent and Folkestone. A two-hour introductory session costs about £250 for 10 people. For more information see www.fightmedieval.com.

BM