Cheers to the office bar

There are many reasons to envy Don Draper — the slick, cleft-chinned ad exec anti-hero of BBC4's Mad Men. Starched collars, sharp suits, profligate philandering and his casual way with whisky in the workplace. Sixties Manhattan offices were places where you could pour a sturdy Scotch (or three) at midday without colleagues shoving an AA card in your hand.

Today, office drinking rarely gets any stronger than the contents of the water cooler. The grand epoch of getting half-cut before home-time is something only remembered wistfully by Fleet Street hacks and cirrhosis-ridden civil servants. Or Boris Johnson, who said in a Tatler interview last year that two daytime pints "gives me wings after lunch you don't feel drunk, you just feel ever so slightly superb."

But alcohol is seeping back into work life. Whether it's Friday afternoon beer o'clock or wine fridges in the boardroom, employees are once again drinking together without venturing outside their revolving doors.

It's the Draper-like domain of trendy ad agencies where workplace imbibing holds the biggest sway. Advertising behemoth Ogilvy & Mather (the firm on which Mad Men is rumoured to be modelled) has a subsidised 100-plus capacity bar at its Canary Wharf offices. "It's a morale-booster," says communications manager Kevin Whitlock. "Plus, Canary Wharf bars are very homogenous and full of corporate types."

With a Wurlitzer jukebox, £2.20 pints of Peroni, a piano, plus occasional gigs from acts including Ellie Goulding, Ogilvy's bar has plenty to entice employees. But Whitlock maintains that work gets done. "A lot of business is done there," he says. "When clients visit, they do have drinks. It's a constant reminder that we are a creative company."

While firms such as MyJam Communications have a "serious wine fridge" in the boardroom, it's Friday afternoon "beer o'clock" that gives staff the greatest excuse to have a tipple. Google's Victoria offices host weekly TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) knees-ups, involving gratis drinks, pizza and Scissor Sisters sets. Distilled (a search-engine optimisation consultancy) has something called Brainy Beer O'Clock, where the workforce engages in alcohol-assisted activities such as pom-pom making and graffiti lessons.

Meanwhile, brand communications agency IncrediBull* has an "IncrediBull* 30 minutes" on Thursdays and Fridays, centred on the office bar, stocked with everything from Veuve Clicquot champagne to premium ales requested by workers. "The office has turned into a full-on disco on Friday evenings before," recalls HR manager Sam Theobald. "When alcohol's consumed, we also crack into our onsite tuck shop too."

Office drinking might be a largely media/PR phenomenon but there are exceptions. Built-asset consultancy E C Harris has its own bar, while a drinks trolley gets wheeled around smoothie-maker Innocent's HQ every Friday.

But is there any point to these pre-weekend shindigs? According to Tristan Connell, MD of ad agency The Bank, "they enable people within the company to get together and it fosters a greater sense of wellbeing among employees".

For Brendon Craigie, MD of technology PR Hotwire, its Friday gatherings are an effective way of minimising office gossip. "When people have after-work drinks in a pub, it usually ends up with a handful of people gossiping," he says.