The worst hangover in the world

I awoke in the early afternoon of 31 December 1995 face down on the carpeted floor of a mansion house flat in Notting Hill with the worst hangover I have ever had. 

It is customary when writing about hangovers to quote the best description of the condition – by Kingsley Amis: ‘A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.’

And there’s also, of course, P.G. Wodehouse: ‘I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover – the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all.’