Our best stake in barbecuing

We Brits may not be the best at hot-coal cuisine, but argues The Daily Telegraph's pub writer ADAM EDWARDS, National Barbecue Week is the envy of the world

We are smack in the middle of Britain's ninth National Barbecue Week (May 30-June 5), which, according to the organisers, is Europe biggest barbecuing event.

I can only assume this desire to celebrate the briquette and blackened banger is one of the unforeseen consequences of global warming.

The increase in greenhouse gases has fired up our enthusiasm for the outdoor grill. Climate change has given birth to the half-naked Anglo-Saxon chef and the burnt pub-grub burger.

But despite these past nine years of barbecue revelry we are still better at Marmite on toast than marinated T-bones. The Brits are not natural grill monkeys. Barbecues belong to the US (and the Antipodes). When you think barbecue you think cold beer and baseball caps not pints and Panamas.

Britain remains in the barbecuing third world. The average pub practitioner of the long handled tong thinks of his grill in much the same light as he does his fruit machine.

It exists for him to make out like a bandit. And despite the claims by National Barbecue Week that we have moved "from sausage to swordfish" the general paucity of our culinary imagination at the charcoal face beggars belief.

Bangers and burgers are the predictable limit of our hot coal cuisine. The first swallow of summer is never going to be a barbecued butterfly of lamb.

And yet bizarrely, according to the organisers of National Barbecue Week, our seven days of sizzling celebrations have been so successful that our American cousins across the pond now intend to hold their first "week" later this summer.

The Australians, too, are hoping to follow suit. Soon, as mad as it sounds, Britain will be able to claim that it has given the world the "barbecuing week".

Mind you, if these countries are truly faithful to the British model they will not so much celebrate the barbecue but rather do as we do and devote a week to a culinary dish in which they are clueless.

And if they are looking for something comparable can I suggest they clear one 52nd of their year for "National Marmite Soldier Week".

Health binges are now just a breeze

The Bacardi Breezer is the sweet way to get smashed. If you want to get tanked up drinking a sugary soft drink then the Breezer is as good as it gets.

However, even its most generous supporter would accept that it is not designed for a fitness regime.

The sugary substance is at odds with the six-pack and the new plan to introduce a half-sugar Bacardi Breezer for "health conscious consumers" is as disingenuous as claiming a fry-up is good for the heart because the crusts from the goose-fat fried bread have been cut off.

Boot finds women's feet are the best bet

Last weekend my friend Boot, he of Nibblers upmarket bar snacks, bet the snug bar of the Seven Tuns a large jar of his delicious salted almonds to a tenner that only he and the women in the bar could lift a ladder-back chair that was leaning against the wall. The rest of the men, he said, would not be able to manage it.

He called on Natasha, a beautiful white wine-drinking local, to stand with the toes of her shoes directly below the front edge of the seat and the top of her head leaning against the wall. She was told to grip the chair by its seat and without bending her legs try and lift it. She did it easily.

He then called on me to try to do the same and I failed miserably. So did every other testosterone tippler.

But before I opened my wallet, I demanded that Boot had a go. He promptly took his shoes off before standing in front of the chair and, lo and behold he made it seem effortless.

Afterwards, as we tucked into his donated stuffed olives, I asked him the trick. "Women have shorter feet," he said mysteriously.

The science baffled me ­ still does ­ but the following weekend I won my money back when I put the neighbouring Horse and Hounds to the test. Today the Horse and Hounds, tomorrow Las Vegas.

Did pub dog Rex roll over and die?

Viv and Avril Morris, licensees of the Kings Arms Hotel at Chipping Norton, have ghosts. And in order to rid their inn of this pestilence they called upon Feathers Mediums.

The Lancashire ghostbusters set up shop at the inn and after taking digital photographs all night they concluded that in one of the snaps a few unintelligible lights signalled the presence of the ghost of Rex the dog.

Feathers' clairvoyant Jackie Denison, who happens to own a similar looking mongrel, claims to have seen Rex clearly (and he presumably barked out his name to her) and she later drew a pen and ink drawing (see the picture, left) of how he looked that night.

I have to say I would find both the picture and the story more believable if the apparition had appeared in less formal mode, if, for example, Rex had been seen hunting for cheese and onion crisps or seeking a crotch to sniff. And in particular if the sighting had been accompanied by a ghostly smell. After all there isn't a pub dog in England, ghostly or otherwise, that doesn't fart.