I rarely laugh when I am served a plate of food. Very occasionally, when some nutty genius has served me something intended to amuse – such as Heston’s meat fruit, René Redzepi’s pot plant full of snails or Ferran Adrià’s gorgonzola globe – I have uttered a faint giggle, but that’s about it. So I surprised myself – and everyone else in the very grand dining room in which I was sitting – when, one morning last week, I laughed at my breakfast.

Laughed so hard that it hurt my face, rattled the chandeliers and caused the mounted stag heads on the wall (if there were any, which I cannot be certain of) to turn and stare and tut.

I had spent the night at