If you can focus through your hangover, take a moment to reflect on who in your office gets most excited about the Melbourne Cup.

If it's anything like workplaces I've graced, it's the pissheads and gamblers followed by the flighty types who get excited over everything except their job; you know - the ones who organise the cake for people's birthdays and come around with that big yellow envelope full of spare change asking you to "chuck in".

2014 Melbourne Cup winner Protectionist

Like Australia Day and Anzac Day, Cup Day is a uniquely Australian celebration that seems increasingly about getting slaughtered on the drink.

Lord knows I've got no qualms about boozing, yet its appeal is always diminished when the amateurs are out in force peeing and vomiting in the street - that's the women - while the blokes stalk around with a watermelon under each tattooed arm, aching for someone to hold their gaze too long.