How to get drunk on tiramisu

You can get drunk on tiramisu. I have done it. It takes two portions at least. You drink (I mean eat) the Marsala wine and the rum — and then must be escorted, tenderly, to the bus stop. I don’t usually drink alcohol. If I did, I would smash up restaurants. But I do eat tiramisu. You have to eat a lot of tiramisu to be hospitalised. That is my reasoning.

Tiramisu means ‘lift me up’. Like Caesar salad and the world, it has a detailed creation myth with its own pretenders, factions, expert witnesses and conspiracy theories. There is a website, the Tiramisu Academy, devoted to the mystery of its origin. (‘Since 2011 we have been transmitting the culture of tiramisu.’) The academy suggests tiramisu was invented to inspire men meeting prostitutes in 19th-century Treviso: an early Viagra for clients who took a dose when leaving the brothel, so they could then copulate with their wives.