Hangover? Try chewing on a deep-fried canary

For hardened drinkers, looking for the perfect hangover cure is like the search for the fountain of youth. To drink and drink without any consequences is the stuff of fantasy – and it’s one that’s been indulged by countless civilisations. A return to one’s GCSE classics days proves it. It’s nice to know what Grumio really got up to in that culina when he wasn’t coquebatting.

For the ancients, getting drunk was a sign of civilisation, proof of masculine virtue and bloody good fun. Athenaeus, a writer who flourished at the turn of the 2nd century AD and the beginning of the 3rd, wrote masterfully about dining and drinking and included in Book Two of The Deipnosophists a recognisable tale of a group of young men who became so intoxicated that they were convinced they were aboard a ship: ‘they threw all the furniture, and all the sofas and chairs and beds, out of the window, as if they were throwing them into the sea, fancying that the captain had ordered them to lighten the ship because of the storm.