Strictly Come Dining!

There's an old proverb, He who eats alone chokes alone. I'm a people person, so I like to eat, and choke together and last night, myself, Martyn and Bex were in Paisley for some food, frolics and felines, courtesy of Martyn*. There was no choking - however I'm guessing that was probably a good thing.

*This story could get quite complicated. There are two Martyn's! There's Martyn, who we sometimes call Arbiter Martyn because of the Character he played in the critically acclaimed (OK, I promise I will stop hamming on about Chess some time in the distant future!) and "Martyn and Bex" Martyn aka Lionel (anyone who sees him do karaoke will understand this comparison).

We'd done this kind of thing before at Martyn & Bex's. In their immaculate abode, just beside the Clyde we feasted on Bex's home-made lasange (which was possibly tastier than a chocolate covered Vincent Frank) and polished it off with some rather 'interesting' pancakes, that by Bex's own admission looked "a bit weird", however the concealing properties of sugar and lemon are far too under rated, maybe all that Susan Boyle needs is a face full of lemon and sugar - or not.

Anyway, that was a good couple of weeks ago, and we had such a good time hanging out together, supping on wine, watching Rent on DVD and munching on ice cream, we decided to it again. So we ventured out to deepest, darkest Paisley to Castle Agnew, home to Martyn, his cats and a collection of musical memorabilia that would even make Andrew Lloyd Webber's collection look like "a couple of bits and bobs".

En route, we stopped off in Tesco's to pick up some wine and a gift for Martyn. Bex had to veto some gifts me and (her) Martyn suggested including some braised polish eel, compost and some cleaning wipes, settling for some cat nip toys for the moggies, some wine and a bread stick. I also picked up some of those new little Mikado stick chocolate things, which are probably the best thing since cheesestrings.

We buzzed the buzzer and a cheery voice greeted us over the intercom. As we went up the slim tenement stairs, an excitable Martyn popped his head over and directed us up the stairs. It was the first time we'd been to his flat and in true "Come Dine With Me Style", we were given a tour of the flat which featured shines to Martyn's favourite musicals, a sumptuous black bedroom complete with disco balls and an array of artwork, not to mention a ginormous Sylvester the cat head. The kitsch flat, also had little candles dotted here and there, one of which supposedly gave off the scent of male arousal.

Our apetites were certainly aroused when Martyn emerged with the first course of Chicken, which was stuffed with haggis (foodie people aparrently call this Chicken Balmoral, however for comedy effect, I'm calling it Chicken Balamory) which was served with some potatoes, peas and carrots. This was then followed up by a desert platter which features Lemon and Orange topped meragnues, little dinky muffins, fresh strawberries and some chocolate profiteroles. It's fair to say, me, Bex and the Martyn's were in food heaven.

After that we watched the film version of The Producers - which we will be bringing to the Kings Theatre, Glasgow, next year. After all deciding that we'd be happy as dancing pigeons we descended on Martyn's room again to rake through a history back catalogue of programmes he had collated.

Another proverb - Time flies when your having fun - certainly rang true as we didn't leave until twenty to two in the morning!

So with dinner and dvd nights from the Martyn 'n' Bex and Martyn, it left only one condender yet to do culinary battle and I will take my gauntlet in a couple of weeks. All I'm saying is I hope they like Fish Fingers, Burnt toast and Froobs.