The guests of a man who was set to celebrate his birthday tonight are quietly rejoicing after he sent out a group Facebook message announcing he’d cancelled the party.

“A party always sounds like a great idea when it’s a few weeks away but, inevitably, on the day it finally rolls around, I never feel like going,” one would-be guest admitted. “I’m looking forward to heading straight home after work for a quiet night on the couch with a case or two.”

Another guest described the birthday boy cancelling as “the best-case scenario for everyone involved”.

“It’s a universally acknowledged law that it’s a dick move to cancel on someone else’s birthday but this is a game-changer,” he said. “This legend has not only been thoughtful enough to invite us all to his party so we could impress people with talk of our cool Friday-night plans, but then to take the extra step of cancelling at the last minute so we don’t actually have to follow through – it’s just next level,” he said.

In his message cancelling the event, the birthday boy explained that he’d only organised the party in the first place because he felt obliged and he’d decided to call it off after realising he was “getting too old for this shit”.