Such a stunt, a mainstay of the office party, often results in cracked glass on the copier, with 32 percent of Canon technicians claiming to have been called out to fix glass plates during the Christmas period after attempts to copy body parts went wrong.

Tim Andrews, a Canon employee from London, said: "We always fit lots of new glass to copiers after New Year due to 'rear-end copying.'"

In fact, Canon claims a shocking 46 percent of service calls are in response to non-work-related breakages.

Geoff Bush from the north of England said one case he'd attended, where a young lady had cracked the glass mid-scan, also jammed the scanner so that it wasn't until the machine was fixed and her colleagues all sober that copies of her backside starting pouring from the machine.

Partly in response to this trend--or perhaps because of the "supersizing" of the western physique--Canon has now increased the thickness of its glass by an extra millimeter.

However, one of the most alarming tales comes to us from service engineer Steven Mannion of northern England. "I had to repair a machine with a photocopy of a man's groin jammed in it," Mannion said.

We can only hope he meant it was the photocopy that was jammed in the machine.

Mannion added: "The manager suggested an office identity parade to see who Canon could charge for the call-out charge."

Will Sturgeon of Silicon.com reported from London.