For some reason: A crisp review.

These turned up in my living room the other day, I'm not sure where they came from, but I try not to ask too many questions about that sort of thing; my guess is magic. Magic snacks happens a lot in my house and is how keep myself from dying from not enough food, or whatever the technical term for that is. Things I find on/under/in my sofa account for about 80% of my sustenance and if/when (when, definitely when) the non-Jurassic Park Attenborough decides to document my life in a series called 'Animal Losers' that looks at the world’s most pathetic creatures, there’ll be a great episode on my foraging techniques. I imagine it would include ol’ Dave dropping the line, “Mother Nature, it seems, is not without her sense of humour” and then cut to a clip of me slouched like a human puddle watching DMX films, eating a bag of two week-old Morrison’s own brand nachos I found behind the TV.

I like that there’s a picture of a pizza on the packet, just in case you needed a reminder of what these are supposed to taste like. But then I guess you kind of do, as they mostly just taste of ketchup and herbs, but that’s fine because I like both those things. I’m not really sure about these. I guess they’re kind of shaped like pizza so maybe they get some points for that. I don’t know, I have no idea what I’m doing really, there’s no method to this madness. This isn’t even pizza, it’s crisps. What the hell is going on? I should just write these off for trying to trick me into think they’re pizza with fancy packet design and artificial oregano. However, that said, there is a skateboarding cheetah with sunglasses so I’m going to give them some extra credit for at least having a mascot that's cool and relevant to my interests.

4 out of 10

Can't a Brother get a little peace? There's a war on the streets and a war in the Pizza East.

I’ve had a little moan about Pizza East on here before. In fairness, my gripe was more my fault than theirs and was down to me not reading the menu properly. However, as I have yet to receive a box of my family’s fingers sent by some shady, multi-national pizza review watchdog, I’m happy to keep dishing out unfair, emotionally influenced scores like a recently divorced, newly alcoholic Olympic gymnastic judge. 

Being the Jesus-like pillar of white-light virtue, decency and altruism that I am, I decided to give Pizza East a second chance. Also I was totally Romania.  As in: ‘beyond Hungary’. As in: ‘really hungry’. As in: ‘I stayed in on Saturday night and watched cartoons until I fell asleep in my clothes’. 

Anyway the pizza was better this time. Largely down to me learning from my past mistakes and making sure I chose one with tomato sauce. I think me and Pizza East can finally get along again, and so, as a token of our rebuilt friendship I’ll offer them the greatest gift one person can give to another besides news socks. The gift of advice. And this is it: Pizza East, you shouldn’t have called yourself Pizza East because it really limits your ability to expand into other parts of the city*, unless you’ve already copyrighted Pizza West, Pizza North and Pizza South, but I doubt you have. Also what if you want to open a restaurant in another city? What if that city’s Eastside is gross? What if it’s Swindon? That whole place is gross. Don’t go there.

I guess that wasn’t really advice and more a damning critique of their business model but it’s too late now, I’ve written it and the thing with writing things on the internet is that once you’ve typed it out, it's there forever.

8 out of 10

*I have since been informed that there is in fact a Pizza East in West London. As a result I'm putting 'Research' on my to do list, just below 'Pay TV license 2008' and 'Die a quiet death at sea'.

Shorewitch H∆use

For those who don’t know, Shoreditch House is this multi-story members club in Croydon Shoreditch that has a whole bunch of bars, a restaurant, spas – like health spas, not the chain of convenience stores, (although, if you’re reading (you’re not), Shoreditch House bigwigs, maybe that could be something to think about), a gym, sofas and an outdoor swimming pool that steams when it’s cold. It’s the kind of place that, were I a young, troubled heir to an eight-figure fortune, I’d spend my days there, marching around, shirt open, mumbling about Faulkner, drunk on £200 scotch at 3pm on a Tuesday. I would think I knew all the staff by their first name but would be wrong and mildly racist about 80% of the time. They’d all hate me, largely due to the time I grabbed a waitresses thigh, asked her if she “liked to pogo” and then fell asleep, perhaps pissing myself and ruining a velvet sofa cushion. I wouldn’t apologise, mention or possibly even remember the incident. However they’d tolerate me because I’d constantly overtip due to not really having any sense of money or value or anything and my Dad would be a pretty big deal and had asked the owners to “For God’s sake, keep an eye on him”/me. 

The only thing standing between me and making this dream a reality is a really big, unclimable wall made out of money. Also I never read The Sound and the Fury even though it was on my reading list at university because rules, like promises to myself to stop watching fail compilations on Youtube for literally three hours and just go to bed already, are made to be broken.

Anyway, they do pizza at Shoreditch House and surprising hopefully no-one, I ate it. It had salami on and I’m no salami expert, or as I desperately hope they say in the industry, ‘salami barmy’, but I think a good way to determine the quality of salami is whether it’s in a circular ‘log’ (gross) or a slightly oval one. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps no one except God and the pigs that poop out salami do.

7 out of 10

Pompeii-back.

What was cool about this pizza was that when I asked for no jalepenos, instead of being spineless, subservient wimps and complying to my outrageous demands, Vesuvio went ahead and, as you can see in the photo above, totally ignored me. I like that. That shows a real strength and belief in your vision. The unwillingness to compromise or waver in your certainty that you know what's best for your customer. That level of artistic integrity is rare, and the fact that it exists in a little pizza restaurant just off Clapton roundabout is a testament to the spirit and resilience of the human desire to create. It brings to mind inspirational figures like Ai Weiwei and Salman Rushdie, standing fast in the face of public opinion, refusing to budge no matter what. People and government are telling them what to do and they simply ignore them because they have a higher calling. Congratulations Vesuvio Pizza Takeaway, your legacy and example of fearless defiance will live on in the countless people who's requests you totally ignore, regardless of how much it disrupts their poop cycle.

This was pretty good even though I had to pick off all the jalepenos myself. I stupidly did this with my fingers and before I took out my contact lenses. If you've ever man handled chili and then given your eyeball a big old poke you'll know how fun it is. My eyes frazzled up like bacon bits in a deep-fat fryer and I am now completely blind. I've just been randomly bashing away at the keyboard for the last ten minutes like an ADHD five year old at a piano. If what I've written so far actually makes any sense then it's a miracle and I am that one monkey  with a typewriter, out of an infinite number, that managed to hammer out Shakespeare. My mum's watching and crying because of what's happened to her family. It's pretty sad.

On the plus side the hospital gave me these sick new sunglasses. In my head I look like James Dean.

6 out of 10