From Paper of Wreckage, an oral history of the New York Post by Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo, which was published in October by Atria Books.

jami bernard: There was an American editor who didn’t get along with the Brits—Craig Ammerman. There was a fistfight during the party. Big fistfight—red faces and people trying to pull their shirts off. I don’t remember who he was fighting.

philip messing: I took a friend to that Christmas party. He was absolutely stupefied because there was a guy named Danny O’Donnell, who used to work in the payroll area. Danny was about 245, 250 pounds, and he looked like a rough-and-tumble sort of fellow. He came up to the Christmas party. Craig Ammerman was a managing editor at the time. Ammerman took umbrage at the fact that this guy, Danny, was at this party that was for the editorial staff on the fourth floor when he worked in another part of the building. He said, “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. Get lost.” Danny says, “I don’t work for you.” Ammerman says, “Fuck you.” They used to say that the fastest line between two points is between Craig Ammerman and a box of doughnuts. He probably tipped in at, I would say, 310 or 290 pounds. Within a matter of moments, the two of them were fighting each other in the city room like a stegosaurus and a brontosaurus in some sort of Jurassic Park scenario. My friend, who was a lawyer, looked at me, incredulous. He says, “This goes on all the time? People just fight in the newsroom?” I said, “Yeah.”

donnie sutherland: It was like something out of Caligula.

susan mulcahy: I don’t know what led to the fight, but I remember Ammerman stood on a desk at one point. I heard later that after the party one of them—I can’t remember which—drove his car into the window of a car dealership way over on the West Side. Rupert Murdoch was upstairs as the party was going on. When he left, a drunk guy, or maybe a couple of drunks, got into the elevator with him and gave him tips about how he could improve the paper. The next day a sign went up saying no alcohol on the premises.

messing: So the end result was that they banned the Post from having parties in the newsroom, and the following year, I think it was, or a year after that, they had it at the local church, about three blocks away from the Post.

charlie carillo: It was in that church basement—Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt, or whatever it was.

bernard: I was thrown out of two of the parties. At one, I punched news reporter Steve Dunleavy in the gut. There was this nude photo of me that people got their hands on and showed around to everyone, including all the printers. Now, at this age, I look back—I have the photo—and I think, What a gorgeous photo. It was taken secretly, on a cruise. We called it the Cruise to Nowhere. A group of us from the newsroom went on a cruise together to the Caribbean. I was sunbathing topless, and Chris Oliver was up above on some deck. I didn’t know. He took the photo, and he showed it around. What I was trying to do was beat him up, and Dunleavy stopped me. I punched Dunleavy in the gut. I also threw a drink in his face. So they made me leave. At the other party, an ex of mine showed up, and I got so mad it looked like there was going to be . . . something . . . so they quickly ushered me out. The Christmas party was always a place where people were getting into trouble.

messing: They had a fight at the party in the church, too, and they banned us from the church.