A well-prepared meal

I turned up at Ben's housewarming.

"Hullo! I've been to Fat Duck!" I said.

"Don't worry, I'll pop you a pizza on." said Ben.

***

Now, I like food. It's great. And, while I'll admit there's nothing sexier than the words "all you can eat" uttered by either man or menu, I'm not against small amounts of clever food.

Fat Duck was different. It was bloody expensive (about £100 a head), and not necessarily good. Their signature dish is "Egg and Bacon ice cream" - it's got a menu that you spend so much time giggling over, you forget to ask "But will it be nice?"

Apparently, it has three Michelin stars. Three courses of well-presented tidbits arrived - the bacon and egg ice cream was the size of a quail's egg with a solitary soldier. The service was excellent, and the fun things in between courses were a giggle (oysters in passion fruit jelly)... but we grabbed snickers bars on the way home.

Except for Kate - Kate went for the cheap menu, which meant that we got to watch hungrily as she was served a large bowl of wonderful soup, a hearty portion of pork roast ("best crackling ever"), and a pudding which she just couldn't finish.

The bread was nice. I stared down the waiters and took five helpings.

***

Ben's housewarming was great. Hurrah for his eclectic selection of erudite ex-shags, fabulous women, young German students, and a BBC Foreign Correspondent.

FC and I got on very well. Turns out he knows as many filthy stories about my friend Mark (the powerful TV commisioner) as I do. Including a time when he took Shaun (previous night's shag) to a party, only to disover that Mark done the same thing, with Shaun's boyfriend.

Mark took one look at the brewing fight, grabbed FC by the arm and said "Let's go to the other end of the bar."

FC and Mark once had a business meeting in a cruise maze, while being sucked off by the same guy.

***

Ben's new bloke and I didn't get on. He's very pretty. Well, he's a lot of very pretty hair. I was told his name was Alp. I figured this was a good conversational gambit - he looked rather bored and conversationally hard work, but I made the effort:

ME: So, your name's Alp?

ALP: Actually, it's Johnny. (He walks off)

I apologise to Ben for this later. Ben blinks. "His name really is Alp. He's just rude."