How to win at a buffet

YOU’RE at an event and there’s a buffet. How can you beat everyone else to hog the best stuff? Use these tactics:

Focus

Often a buffet follows some boring speech about how much we’ll all miss the deceased or whatever. Ignore that. Scope what’s there, plan your route, be ready for your turn on the tongs. Preparation is the difference between stuffed mushrooms and chicken Kievs on your plate.

Appetite

If you’re serious about being the buffet GOAT, you’ve got to go in hungry. But not too hungry or you’ll make bad decisions and end up with a plate full of crisps. Drop a Lion bar around 30 minutes before kick off and you’ll be primed to bring the pain to those chili tiger prawns.

Vision

When it comes to fitting three days food on a nine-inch plate, architectural vision is key. A solid base of potato wedges, a finger-sandwich house of cards, chocolate truffles adeptly balanced on the slopes of a black rice salad. It can be beautiful.

Speed

Buffets favour the guzzler. Once you’ve loaded up get those mozzarella sticks rammed down your throat double-time so you can get your arse back in line, still chewing, for seconds. They might even still be bringing stuff out if they’re lazy, disorganised scum.

Ruthlessness

There’s one slice of gluten-free carrot cake left and the coeliac behind’s been on about it all queue. What do you do? Take it. You’re not here to make friends. Now kick that old man’s cane out from under him and knock that child’s head in the blinis to claim the last chicken satay skewers.

Disguise

Everyone gets turned away by self-appointed buffet bouncers eventually. Simply tail, blackjack and swap clothes with a member of serving staff and clear the buffet into the back of your waiting car. Buffet’s more important than your brother’s wedding anyway.

What’s wrong with Boris? A baffled Tory tries to work out why his hero has gone green

CARBON net zero? What happened to the good old days of zero belief in global warming? Who’s got to Boris? Norman Steele investigates: 

It’s all a trick

Boris is the consummate con-artist and with this climate conference next week, there’s a boatload of marks incoming. Act like Mr Green, get them all signed up to zero-carbon, corner the coal market for a song. Our lights on and their lights out. What a geezer.

Carrie’s got to him

It’s well known that Boris’s greatest weakness is his dick, and his young bride – better than Kate, pound for pound, for my money – may have hypnotised him via his member. Big mistake, lady. That Churchillian spam javelin is wayward. It’ll be shagging an oil heir next.

It’s all to piss off Cameron

Brexit, becoming prime minister, basically this whole government: it’s all because Boris is rightfully angry Cameron jumped the queue. The lad Johnson’s remembered his predecessor did some green shit and is once again betting the country on outdoing him. You have to respect the pettiness.

We’re getting technology from aliens

Or the future, one or the other. The Boris charm has persuaded them to give us incredible blue glowing energy cubes and we’ll use them to develop green power, sell it on, run the world. It is hypothetical but it’s not been disproved, unlike climate change.

None of it’s true

The man lies! He simply lies. It’s one of his best and most authentically Conservative qualities. All this green ground-zero bollocks is to dominate headlines the week it was revealed he and his wife had their mate over at Christmas breaking lockdown rules. See? You hadn’t even heard about that.