Suggested variation...........

Go up the pub. Stagger back.

Break some eggs into a metal thing. Saucepan, frying pan, whatever looks cleanest.

Add some salt.

Add some Other Stuff - baked beans, cheese bits (smalls works best), sardines, whatever you find at the back of the fridge.

Put the pan on a low heat (a cooker is ideal) and give the mix a bit of a stir with whatever comes to hand. Not too vigorously. Give the thing a shake. When it starts to look dry at the edges, flop it out onto a plate (or, if you're confident, a piece of toast).

Eat while standing at the sink.

Open a tin of beer.

I tried this variation........

Go up the pub. Stagger back.

Break some eggs into a metal thing. Saucepan, frying pan, whatever looks cleanest.

Add some salt.

Add some Other Stuff - baked beans, cheese bits (smalls works best), sardines, whatever you find at the back of the fridge.

Put the pan on a low heat (a cooker is ideal) and give the mix a bit of a stir with whatever comes to hand. Not too vigorously. Give the thing a shake. When it starts to look dry at the edges, get ready to flop it out onto a plate (or, if you're confident, a piece of toast), but first, go to the living room to look for a fork or a spoon or something.

Get distracted and sit watching repeats of The Old Grey Whistle Test until you doze off.

Wake up in A&E with your lungs on fire and scorch marks on your vest.

Wonder why the police officer just asked you if you have any friends who might be able to put you up for the night.

Buy a plastic cup of coffee from the machine in the corridor.

Go to freezer, take out frozen fish and chips, pile them into grill pan of cooker, turn on grill (full), go to living room and fall asleep in front of crap TV.

~~~~~~~~~~~wavy lines, perhaps half an hour goes by~~~~~~~~~~~

Your flatmate* comes in from the pub and walks into the kitchen to find the cooker apparently on fire ... Fortunately it's only the contents of the grill pan on fire and not the actual cooker or anything near it - the flames look impressive but haven't reached anything else flammable. Yet.

Flatmate switches off grill, removes grill pan, pours water over grill pan until the fire goes out, looks at mess in grill pan and thinks, "I'm nae cleaning that." Hears snoring and TV noise. Checks living room to find man asleep on the settee in front of some Channel 4 programme. Goes to bed, cursing.

* me

according to my uncle who was a Glasgow fireman.

...and wannabe drummer rolled in pissed. Went up to his bedroom, put on headphones, Smiths album at deafening volume, and proceeded to play drums on his pillow with a pair of drum sticks. A few minutes later this happy scene is destroyed by sight of his Dad, in dressing gown and face like thunder, standing in the doorway. Takes off headphones to discover he'd forgotten to switch off the speakers. Words are exchanged.

Work, go to pub. Stay for several hours. Go to "The Khyber Pass", or indeed any purveyors of quality rubies. Go home. Start eating curry. From aluminiem dish thingy. Phone rings. Answer phone. Place dish carefully on coffee table. Speak to caller. Sit on curry. Worked for me. Twice.

May I recommend Ice Cream With Red Wine "Maison"?

This, Raymondo, is what you do:

Find nearly-empty tub of ice cream in freezer. It will be there, believe me, and it will be a generic supermarket vanilla, which is perfect.

Find a bottle of red wine with some red wine still in it (how hard can this be?).

Slosh some wine into the ice cream and watch the almost alchemical loosening effect. Note the pleasing dawn-of-the-universe whorls of red in the base material of the ice cream.

Eat with spoon while sitting on toilet. Serves one (sad person).

The beauty of this dessert is that it requires no washing up (if you give the spoon a good lick).

When I was a student, Rod would come in pissed and make himself something to eat. And sometimes forget about it. The time that I got to the frying-pan, half full of oil, three sausages in it, gas on full blast, pillar of smoke rising, probably a minute away from spectacular combustion, whilst Rod snored on the sofa was the last straw. I went fucking ballistic at him and he knew that he was endangering the lives of everyone in the house.

So then things got put on a very gentle gas.

We'd often come down to find a dehydrated pie in the gas reg 1/4 oven. Or a panful of white jelly that was, presumably, pasta when Rod decided to put it on the previous night.

Rod's other recipes were very similar to Bert's.

This, Raymondo, is what you do:

Boil some potatoes. Press through a colander, shave off curly extrusions onto plate with knife. Garnish with "red sauce".

backwards7’s Death By Chocolate Mousse in seven easy steps

1. Somehow obtain a recipe for chocolate mousse. I suggest looking on the side of a sugar packet. All the best recipes can be found on the sides of packets.

2. Recipes for chocolate cakes and mousses are usually devised by lightweights who can’t handle their chocolate. Make a careful note of the quantity of chocolate required by the recipe and then double it.

3. Make the chocolate mousse as per the instructions on the crumpled packaging. Feel free to improvise. Remember if something doesn’t sound right then it probably isn’t. The end result should be dark-brown to black in colour, have the heavy consistency of butter, and the density of a black hole.

4. Scoop the chocolate mousse into various saucepans, cereal bowls and teacups ready for serving.

5. Eat one heaped teaspoon of the chocolate mousse. Fight the urge to vomit as cholesterol and blood sugar levels spike to dangerous highs.

6. Place the containers of chocolate mousse in a fridge. Wait for them grow mould that cures diabetes and terminally clogged arteries.

7. Repeat until dead.

Thamesmen’s lunch for hungry midnight ramblers

1. Stagger home drunk from your nearest Student Union. Open random doors in your house until you locate the kitchen.

2. Decide that now would be an excellent time to walk the Thames path from Reading to Greenwich.

3. Grill a random quantity of fish fingers. They will form the basis of a healthy snack that will provide you with energy for the long journey ahead.

4. While the fish fingers are smouldering, butter several slices of white bread. Be sure to stop when your friend points out that you are enthusiastically buttering the sleeve of your jacket.

5. Place charred fish fingers in between slices of buttered bread. Wrap in cling film.

4. Walk through waist-deep flood-water to Sonning.

5. Stand in a grove of partially submerged trees while eating fish finger sandwiches.

6. Walk back the way you came.

7. Wake up on the floor in wet trousers.

First drink two bottles of wine. Prepare dinner surprisingly competently. Get to carving turkey. Get a couple of slivers of meat off it, then hit carcass. Swear loudly about crap frozen birds. Storm into kitchen still swearing loudly while people round the table look hungry. Return to table still swearing to salvage some meat off legs. Swear some more. Realise you cooked the turkey upside down. Go sheepish. The belligerently blame stupid square frozen turkeys. Serve surprisingly moist and tender meat. Sheepishly drink another bottle of wine.

As a food writer, I probably shouldn't tell you about the time I returned to my bedsit after a pub crawl and the only things to eat in the place were a loaf of bread and a jar of pineapple in creme de menthe I'd bought for some bizarre reason at Harrods on what at the time was a rare trip to London. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in living history to bring those two ingredients together in a Breville sandwich toaster. And the world hadn't even heard of Heston Blumenthal at the time.