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So we’re having your friends over again, and you’ve told me to prepare something special. Being the dutiful little wife you always expect me to be, I’ve put a great deal of thought into tonight’s menu – and knowing how particular your friends can be, I’ve prepared them each their own individual dish, as follows…

For Martin, whose monobrow is Cro-Magnon, who was born wearing an animal logo over his heart, and whose chins the turkey wants back: T-bone steak, medium rare, served with asparagus tips, a fresh green salad, chopped pistachio nuts, and 8 to 900 milligrams of burnt thallium salts. That should give him three more days to use the word “methinks” wittily in conversation, to slosh and gargle his Merlot because it “releases the flavour”, and to tell everyone he meets how his wife was born under the sign of Dexys, so her parents christened her Eileen. (Even though she was born twenty years before that song was even written!)

For Eileen, who gave us dirty towels when we stayed the weekend, who kisses her miniature poodle with tongues, and who was so horrified by the death of Princess Diana that her hair turned platinum blonde overnight: braised lambs kidneys in garlic butter on a bed of spinach, served with artichoke, purple flowering broccoli and a reduction of calvados, crab apple and antimony. Perhaps this will finally stop her asking, “You’ve been married ten years now – why no kids?” (“Because we discovered something called birth control, my dear. It’s fucking wonderful.”)

For Trevor…

Read the complete story here.