2011 has started tremendously and the power of 52NT has kept flowing all veins of my life and others. It is like a drug in some ways – once tasted, never forgotten. I’ve found that situations from last year have cropped up time and again in moments when I’m wavering or indecisive. Take Bikram Yoga for example (yoga performed in a room heated to 40 degrees). I’ve never understood why someone would want to do exercise in sauna heat, it boggles the mind. But when the opportunity presented itself to me recently, it was my African dance teacher’s philosophy of  ”limber for life” that came back to me and before I knew it I’d signed up. Five weeks later and I’m certainly more limber. I’ve also sweated more than I ever thought possible and seen a room full of other men and women do the same. Frankly, it isn’t pleasant, but you do feel great afterwards.

The "Wimbledon White". What a belter of a loaf

I’ve also taken to making bread. You’ll see a particularly fine example of a “Wimbledon White” on the right. It was something I wished I had done last year but never got round to. Then one day I passed a shelf containing some yeast (as you do) and spontaneously decided to give it a go. I’m a way off olive-infused ciabatta yet but I’m now turning out a decent sandwich loaf having bought a bread tin, and I’m toying with the idea of trying a foccacia. It is immensely satisfying to spend 15 minutes making something, 90 minutes watching it double in size and then 30 minutes baking it, only to discover that it not only looks great but tastes incredible too. Get your orders in now.

And so to the book, the literary millstone around this project’s proverbial neck (with sentences like that you can see what I’m up against). It is progressing, albeit slowly. In fact the hardest part is getting a few chapters together which I’m happy with and a proposal to send to a publisher/agent. I say that’s the hardest part. In fact, it is being disciplined enough to sit down of an evening and write some words when every other person you know is watching football/drinking/enjoying the sun/on holiday etc. It is harder than I thought and I need to get better at it.

Thank you all for your continued emails, texts, Tweets, Facebook messages and general levels of support for the project. I promise a book will surface at some point, whether I publish it myself or not. I owe it to everyone who supported me last year at the very least.

Now I’m off to make some crusty bread rolls. See you soon.

I spent January not drinking beer. “So what?” you may think. But to a man who subscribes to What’s Brewing? magazine and is a card-carrying member of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), it was like denying tabloid publicity to Jordan. I felt bereft as I sat in the pub, night after night, drinking an increasingly large selection of drinks. In the end I ran out of things to mix with tonic (although I absolutely drew the line at slimline tonic). I didn’t lose any weight, I spent more than I normally would, my hangovers were worse and I looked like a knob. Moral of the story? Beer is good for you.

Other new things on the horizon include a Bikram yoga class (yoga in an incredibly hot room) and the Mini Golf World Championships. Plus I have locked in trips to no less than 4 different countries so far this year on the back of the last trip’s success to visit two countries in 24 hours.

52 New Things as a project may be over, but the urge remains stronger than ever. Saying yes to things has become about a thousand times easier, and ferreting out unusual events or restaurants far more commonplace. I look around at the people in the office and on the tube and I wonder if they lead a varied life, trying new experiences and meeting interesting new people, even perhaps on a monthly basis. Sadly I suspect not. I hope that the book will inspire people to break out from the routine of daily life and explore the wonderful myriad of opportunities, experiences and, let’s face it, pain on offer. It may be a cliche, but life really is too short.

Finally, some of you may remember that my fifth new thing was to call or see my Granddad every couple of weeks. I managed to keep this up for almost the entire year and I am so glad I did as he passed away recently at the ripe old age of 99-years-old. If ever there was a vindication for the project, it was that. RIP Granddad Thorpe.

Not only that but it has been shortlisted as well. My fate now rests in the hands of a panel of four judges including Dame Stephanie Shirley (UK Ambassador for Philanthropy) and Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent, who will draw up three finalists next week.

This is a huge honour for me and absolutely unexpected. I can honestly say that the nomination has come as a complete shock. When I began the project I had no idea that it would end up potentially winning a fundraising award and, quite frankly, win or lose – the nomination is more than enough. I know people always say that but I actually mean it. No….really.

I am, however, a little short on target funds. I have raised and raised (and then lowered) the target throughout the project and at the moment I am about 85% there. It would be great if anyone else could spare a few pennies to see me past my target so I don’t look a complete knob when those four lovely, attractive, generous, kind, funny, inspirational judges make their votes next week.

Click here to empty your pockets for a great cause – The Alzheimer’s Society.

Thanks everyone. I’m off to dig out my bribing pants.

This last year has been an epic journey through a maze of experiences that I never thought I’d be part of. From the humble beginnings of vowing to not eat crisps for the year (something I am proud to say I more or less stuck to) through past trying Viagra, having my portrait painted, walking an alpaca, trying African dance, having that wax and ending with a flurry by walking over broken glass and then releasing a Christmas single. Sometimes I cannot believe that chap in the pictures was me, having his most intimate hair ripped out or his shoulder tattooed with the blog logo.

Highlights of the year were the occasions when I decided to do something that I really didn’t want to do. The dance class was close to my idea of hell but turned out to be one of the best experiences of the project. Walking home from work should have been hard and boring but turned out to be fascinating (and a bit drunken). Viagra seemed foolish but for one reason or another (taking it before a dinner party) it became a highlight. The Arabic lesson reignited my passion for languages while driving from Land’s End to John O’Groats fulfilled a lifelong dream. Having a pedicure performed by little fish was just weird while fasting for just weekend became the hardest challenge of the entire project.

Of course there was the odd misfire, there always would be with 52 activities to find over the whole year. Spinning wool, for example, was a mistake while “using a bidet” was just a plain cop out. On hindsight I probably shouldn’t have allowed a PR to corral me into a pizza-making lesson at Dominos and the cocktail-making course was really more a piss up with some friends. And the less said about “making some chutney” the better I think.

Throughout this project I have been overwhelmed by the support, generosity and acceptance of everyone I’ve come into contact with. I have met a wonderfully bizarre assortment of people over the year, from Peta and Bruce who took me Alpaca walking to the lovely Caroline Wade who painted my portrait, Simon the woodwork teacher who helped me carve something useful out of wood and Jim who taught me graffiti. Everyone has been patient, open and interested and without them I couldn’t have done half the things I did. Short of thanking them all again individually, I hope this goes some way to portraying my gratitude.

I’d also like to thank every single person who made a suggestion for a New Thing to try. There was somewhere around 500 in total, both off and online, and many of them led to actual New Things. The inventiveness of some people who I am likely to never meet is staggering and I’d like to say thank you to you all for your participation (accept Alan B – what the hell is wrong with you man? That’s illegal even in Holland…).

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who donated money to the project’s chosen charity – the Alzheimer’s Society. I never wanted to profit financially from this venture and I have been truly amazed at the generosity of some readers. I’ve raised the target constantly throughout the project and now stand only a few pounds from the final target of £752. The page will close on 31 January so if anyone would like to donate please do. No hard sell from me though, marathon season approaches after all and we’ll all be penniless again before long.

A special thank you needs to go out to everyone involved with the 52 New Things Christmas Single. Probably a personal highlight of the project for many reasons, I absolutely couldn’t have done it without the help, support and talents of Lizzy Spit, Joe Lee, Declan Daly, the engineers at Sound Savers, my brother Simon Thorpe who made the video, Debbie Attwood for her creative (and PR) input and, of course, everyone who bought the single. I have no idea where the song came or how much we raised (although sadly we missed the No. 52 spot) but I do know that “Christmas Day TV” will be out there in internet land available to buy for ever, with all profits going to the Alzheimer’s Society.

I couldn’t go without saying a special thank you to Mrs NT, my long-suffering, deeply-patient, incredibly supportive and utterly beautiful other half. In a year of great personal sadness for her she found the inner strength to allow me to take on and complete this foolish enterprise, even managing to accompany me to a pottery lesson at a time when most others would be rendered house-bound. Her suggestions and support have been invaluable and if I haven’t always shown it, I say now that I couldn’t have done it without her.

And so that’s it. 52 weeks, 52 new things. The 52^nd? Well…I thought I’d have a crack at writing this thing up into a book. Gotta be worth a go, surely? Stephen King seems to bang one out every six months so how hard can it be? I’ll post the odd update as I go and maybe stick up a few more pictures as they come through of the portrait and whatnot.

All that remains then is to say thank you to you, the reader, for sharing this often hilarious, sometimes painful but always fulfilling journey with me. It has been a blast.

In the unlikely event it ever gets published, please buy my book. I owe Mrs NT a very large new handbag.

Nick Thorpe
7 Jan 2011
London, UK

22 years ago, at the ripe old age of four (oh okay then, five…….FINE! seven) I was sitting in the lunch hall in a primary school in leafy south London. I had my Transformers lunch box in my hand, my Global Hypercolour T-Shirt on underneath my uniform and my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pants on. Life was good. Life got even better when I realised mum had made me ham sandwiches and included a Fromage Frais in my lunchbox.

All around me friends were alternatively tucking into either the questionable school dinners or home-made lunches, faithfully packed by weary parents every morning. Being one of two at that point meant that my brother and I received identical lunches, a clever tactic to avoid any potential sibling arguments. It also meant a certain amount of food that only my brother liked (Dairylea) ended up in my lunch box, resulting in the inevitable “Lunchtime Barter”.

I am sure the Lunchtime Barter took place in every school across the country, and still does today. As each class takes their place at the dinner tables, the “lunch boxers” will invariably wait until the “dinners” arrive to inspect what fayre was on offer in the canteen today. A moment of silence invariably hung in the air as each player sized up their target foods and mentally calculated if their goods would be of any value.

Then, at some unseen signal, the table would explode into a frenzy of trading, bartering, loaning, pleading, buying, selling and, eventually, stealing. Walker’s crisps would be swapped for a piece of the canteen’s garlic bread while a KitKat could fetch a toffee pudding WITH custard. Chips were the cigarettes of the table, with 10 roughly equalling half a sandwich, but the abundant supply of fruit was rendered worthless by too many well-meaning mothers. Cans of coke, nectar to the water-drinking “dinners”, were gold. It took me another 10 years before I realised the uncanny resemblance of this lunchtime auction to the modern stock exchange. It took me a further 15 minutes to hate the latter as much as I did the former.

The trading didn’t just occur between the school dinners and the lunchboxers. Often inter-lunch box trading would occur, providing a valuable opportunity to offload some Dairlylea Dunkers in favour of a delicious Munch Bunch. Now I loved my ham sandwiches; I loved them with cucumber, I loved them with cheese, I even loved them with a spot of mustard at that young age. Point is, I couldn’t get enough of them.

So when, one winter’s day, I finished my ham sandwich in record time, I took the unusual step of offering up my crisps in exchange for another ham sandwich. If I’m honest with myself I was already full, but I had a hunger for some wafer thin Sainsbury’s ham between two bits of Mighty White and I was prepared to pay large. After a while, someone, I don’t remember who, agreed to part with their ham sandwich in exchange for my crisps (Monster Much no less – DIAMOND). I do remember that it was from an adjoining table which shows the lengths my seven-year-old self was prepared to go to get my ham fix.

This new sandwich was fairly standard to my eyes – white bread, what looked like marg, a thin layer of something white, three slimy slices of ham and a token bit of lettuce. “That,” I thought to myself, “was a fricking steal.” Although I didn’t think “fricking” as I was too young, I probably thought “blooming” or “wicked”. One minute later and it had gone. I was one satisfied child.

5 minutes later and I had finished my yoghurt and fruit too (good boy, me) and was getting ready to go out and play British Bulldogs. As I rose I remember feeling a bit odd and slightly light-headed. Next thing I know the entire contents of my stomach – including two ham sandwiches – landed on the table, splattering the girl next to me’s lasagne (it’s funny the details you remember). I was startled to say the least, and more than perplexed. The vomit stank of bad things and, with the flecks of ham floating in a pool of yoghurt, I hurled again. I was not popular in maths that afternoon.

Call it stubbornness, call it psychological blocking, call it anything you like. Fact is, after that day I couldn’t look at or smell ham again without feeling nauseous. Weird thing was I was fine with bacon and salami but gammon, wafer thin ham, Parma ham or any other variety and I’d sooner put my man orbs in blender. I knew it was stupid but I just resisted change. I ate everything else so why worry about a bit of ham?

My brother, egging me on as usual

22 years and 50 new things later, the opportunity to break this foolish childhood hangover emerged on Boxing Day as the family sat down to a lunch of leftovers. In a rare show of sneaky collusion, my family emerged from the kitchen en masse as I took my seat at the table and placed a huge object in front of me: a big, boiled, pink, stinky ham. Fighting back the sick, my questioning eyes were answered with my greatest fears.

“Yes,” said my mother simply, “it is a ham and we all expect you to eat some. Call it your 51^st new thing. But don’t hurl it up because it cost me a fortune.”

Not sure about this....

Ignoring my urge to marinate the ham in the contents of belly, I struggled to admit that it was actually a good idea. At the age of 29 I should probably have got over this silly aversion by now. Time was marching on after all. What if they served ham at my wedding? Or the celebratory dinner for my Nobel Prize for journalism? Or my tête à tête with Kylie Minogue? No, I was being silly. I had no plans to get married for years yet…

So, in a flurry of bravado and with more than a pinch of misgiving, I sliced myself off a chunk and, reluctantly, dove in. It was…………..ok. That’s it. OK. It tasted a little like bacon, a lot like gammon and somewhat like the wafer thin ham of old. I retched a bit, gurned a bit, did a little sick in my mouth, but eventually I swallowed it down. I even managed a couple more slices and was on the verge of edging towards enjoying it before deciding that enough was probably enough and I’d pushed my luck too much. But I’d done it! 22 years and now I felt like….well, I bit of a knob actually. A half-hearted “well done” from my brother told me that this little victory was all mine. A fine way to (almost) finish 52 New Things.

Finding it a bit tough actually

That is a look of pleasure. No, really.

There are, of course, hosts of others but I presume that I am on the whole, like most, a relatively open-minded sort of chap. I don’t care if people want to watch the X Factor despite never watching it myself, I don’t mind if people want to bump uglies with persons of the same sex even though I like girls, and I really don’t mind if people want to pay to see Simply Red. Alright I do a little bit.

The point is that I don’t hold many preconceptions in my life and if this project has done anything it has opened my eyes to a whole new world of opportunity and adventure. And pain. And a bit of humiliation. If I have any major preconceptions left it would be a) that anyone who wears a “popped collar” should be sterilised and b) that package holidays are a bit shit. As addressing the first would land me with a sizable stay in chokey, I decided to round off 52 New Things with a treat-cum-challenge.

Having not had a holiday all year, myself and Mrs NT had decided to take a week off in December and go away. Little did I know at the time that my week in the sun would coincide perfectly with a certain Christmas single coming out and result in me managing the PR for a festive song from 2000 miles away. However, plans were made and options considered.

Being a white, middle-class, Surrey sort of chap, I’ve spent most of my travelling time with a backpack on my back, a Lonely Planet in one hand and a beer in the other, loudly talking to bemused locals in English and trying to sleep with German students. A cliché it may be but it has allowed me to travel well and see many amazing things, and not just naked ladies.

Spanish festivity. Wow.

To organise an adventure by yourself and leave the actual day-to-day activities to materialise from whatever situation occurs is one of the great joys in life. To pay a flat fee and have a perma-tanned man called Brian from Southend escort you from the UK all the way to your resort whilst pointing out “areas of local interest” (roundabouts) and making you promise to attend the “Rep Revue” (kareoke) that night is, to be honest, my idea of hell.

So when Mrs NT floated the idea of a package holiday to the Canary Islands due to money constraints I scoffed, I laughed, I scolded. No way was I going to affront my middle class sensibilities by flying with Thomas Cook to some cockroach-infested shithole on a beach with an English bar.

However, as is often the case when part of a couple, I was gradually worn down until after a few weeks of moaning and subtle mind games (”they have a free bar and a nudist beach”), I relented.

Three weeks later and we were on the plane (after an 8 hour delay) to Fuertaventura where we had a room in a four star resort with all meals and drinks included for a ridiculously low price thanks to search engines, off season and a very patient travel agent.

What kind of sadist goes to an evening with Donna Summer?

I won’t bore you with the intimate details of a package holiday away. That would be like showing you a slideshow of it (although I have included a couple of choice pictures for your delectation). Suffice to say though that I was hugely impressed. All of my preconceptions were dashed and smashed, leaving me with nothing but admiration for the resort, staff and the low, low price we paid for it all.

Everyday a enormous, varied buffet was presented to us at each meal at various points around the resort. All drinks were included, meaning I lived on a drip of Gin and Tonic (as any proper Chap should). And the weather was a constant, agreeable 27 degrees. We even avoided the evening entertainment, preferring instead to present ourselves outside as a tasty smorgasbord for the island’s mosquitoes.

If there was one element that smeared the good name of package holidays, it was the constant, over-bearing presence of THE GERMANS. The resort was crawling with them. In fact, German was the unofficial second language, with all signs and menus in German first THEN English. We weren’t top of the pecking order anymore! For a Brit this was a new and slightly uncomfortable sensation. So I did the only thing I could do in this situation….get my towel out:

So the moral of this story? Don’t be afraid to challenge your preconceptions. Sure, you may prove them to be right but at least you can say that you tried. After a week of no reps, stuffing my face, drinking myself silly and stolen glances at the nudist beach, I can say I am full package holiday convert and for that I am thankful.

Obviously I am not thankful that the nudist beach was used mainly by elderly German couples.

New Thing #50 – Challenge a preconceived idea.

I wish I could be writing this from backstage on TOTP as we prepare to perform our ode to Christmas past for the festive special. However a number of things have prevented me from discovering just how well the song has done.

Firstly, iTunes and Amazon will not tell me how copies they have sold for another two months. And secondly the official charts company charge an enormous fee to find out the exact number and official chart position. Paying that would negate all the donated hard work and royalties to the Alzheimer’s Society.

What I can say with certainty is that although we missed out on an official chart position, we did chart! I’m proud to announce that 52 New Things “Christmas Day TV” occupied the 13^th spot in the Singer/Songwriter chart on iTunes. In fact we were in the Top 40 for a couple of weeks. AND we even made the same chart in the New Zealand iTunes….which is a bit random. So thank you New Zealand!

A lovely girl called Candice also used the song as a backing track to a charity appeal she did for Alzheimer’s on Youtube. You can view this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnC2svTAKDI

Charting or not charting, the point is that the song sold copies, made people happy and raised money for an extremely worthy cause. The whole process was hugely enjoyable and massive learning curve from a personal point of view.

The YouTube video of the song has well over 1500 views while Popbitch, The Times, Sunday Star and Wimbledon Guardian all gave their backing to the song. The support on Twitter and Facebook has been nothing short of astonishing.

The song is still available to buy on iTunes and Amazon and a host of other sites, and will be for a long time. Please do keep buying it as all the proceeds from the sale will go directly to Alzheimer’s. For ever.

Buy on iTunes: http://bit.ly/ChristmasDayTV

Or on AMAZON – http://amzn.to/XmasDayTV-Amazon

I have been genuinely humbled by this entire process and I want to thank each and every one of you for everything you have given.

With 3 things left on the list, it is going to be a bit of a scramble over the next couple of weeks but watch out tomorrow for New Thing # 50 – Challenge a major preconception.

Until then, thank you again. You have all made a huge difference to me, the Alzheimer’s Society and fans for good music everywhere.

Today sees the 52 New Things project reach something of a pinnacle: I am formally releasing my first ever song: The 52 New Things Charity Christmas Single which I hope will hit 52 in the charts and raise £5,200 for the Alzheimer’s Society.

52 New Things – “Christmas Day TV” is available to buy on iTunes: http://bit.ly/ChristmasDayTV

Or on AMAZON – http://amzn.to/XmasDayTV-Amazon

The wait is over. After weeks of manic song-writing, days of begging and one perfect night of musical brilliance, “Christmas Day TV” is now available to buy from iTunes, with a not half bad music video to support it on YouTube.

As you know, I’d like to get this song to Number 52 in the charts if I can. It has obvious synergies with the project but also I think it is a far more realistic goal than the Christmas Number 1 spot, which seems to be tied at the moment between X Factor and 4 minutes of total silence. How can we compete with that?

So tell your friends, badger colleagues, buy a copy for your mum and let’s see if we can hit Number 52 by Sunday 12^th December and raise £5,200 for the Alzheimer’s Society in the process.

Christmas Day TV sleeve art

The Twitter hashtag is: #ChristmasDayTV. Please spread the word far and wide.

The single is available to buy in iTunes now here: http://bit.ly/ChristmasDayTV

or on Amazon – http://amzn.to/XmasDayTV-Amazon

The music video can be found on YouTube here and below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nykfZG957oQ

The Facebook group has more information and few more links here: http://www.facebook.com/52NewThings

HELP US GET TO NUMBER 52 AND RAISE £5,200 FOR CHARITY!

Special thanks for this New Thing go to:

The Cannizaro House Hotel in Wimbledon and the Forge Restaurant in Covent Garden for supplying the 62 empty champagne  bottles between them.

Clare Elcombe for taking her life and mine into her own hands and teaching me the ways of Glass Walking. If you’d like to be taught, drop Clare a line on clare_elcombe@hotmail.com

Have you any idea what stuffing three cream crackers into your mouth, one after another, feels like? It’s like trying to read one of Katie Price’s books – turgid, dry and ultimately a complete waste of time. Neither taste nice but at least by eating Jordan’s books you can rid the world of one more bit of superfluous crap. Cream crackers, on the other hand, are just nasty, resentful little bastards of biscuits whose sole purpose in life seems to be to soak up every last bit of moisture in one’s body and stick in your mouth like a petulant bogey.

This hatred is not unfounded, for last weekend I attempted to make use of these good-for-nothing-except-cheese crackers in a potentially epic New Thing. I had been challenged to break a world record as part of Guinness World Records Day, an annual event where simple-minded folk around the globe all get together to break various records. “Pah!” I thought, “this’ll be easy. A few spoon on my face here, a couple of hundred socks on my foot there, and before you know it I’ll be racking up the records.”

So I dispatched an email to World Record HQ, deep in the basement of the Guinness factory I presume. To my enduring surprise someone from the press team got back to me immediately. He not only welcomed my participation in this grand event, he even offered to help me out a bit. I had confided in him that a busy young journalist like me is a time poor, ambition rich fellow and as such had no idea which of the many thousands of records to try and break. Should I try and swallow the most amount of Peter Andre CDs or perhaps find the most amount of X Factor contestants with talent? I jest, of course.

Two days later a list of potentials arrived in my inbox. Suggestions ranged from the hard (most star jumps in one minute – 61) to the impossible (fastest time to put on a duvet cover – 43 seconds) via the ridiculous (most sweetcorn kernels eaten in 3 minutes using a cocktail stick – a whopping 236). However I spied one involving cream crackers. Some fool had decided to see how fast he could eat three of the things and managed a time of 35 seconds, a record that had stood for over 5 years. Ha! Pathetic. I could probably do a packet in that time.

I nonchalantly dispatched an email to World Record HQ informing them that I would be breaking this long-held record seven days thence. I wouldn’t even need to practice. I’d eaten enough cheese and crackers at enough dinners to know that small nibbles are the key to eating these bastions of the biscuit world.

Two days later the fast-tracked approval arrived from the organisers, along with a surprising amount of instructions, forms, T&Cs, blank certificates (brilliant) and some disclaimers. Having spent a perfectly good lunch hour wasting my time on the legal matters surrounding the attempt, I was feeling uber confident. How had no one broken this record in the last 5 years? Perhaps at Cracker HQ they had secretly prevented anyone from shattering this record for fear of reprisals? I am scared of no one, I thought. I’ll break this record.

The day arrived and my assembled group of supporters, onlookers and well wishers were standing by ready to applaud my inevitable success. Well, Mrs NT was both well-wisher and onlooker if I’m honest. OK and supporter too. Look, I completed this after New Thing # 44 – 7 Days of New Food and in the middle of the Christmas Single preparations. I didn’t really have time to rustle up a grandstand of supporters. And anyway, even if Guinness really did need two “impartial” witnesses I could probably just coerce Mrs Wong from upstairs into signing something.

Perfect

I took my seat at the table and spent five minutes selecting three likely candidates for the record attempt. I was looking for an unblemished cracker, with the full complement of corners and untouched bubbles. Having found three likely candidates that almost fit the bill, I did some breathing exercises, collected some saliva in my mouth (sneaky, I thought) and nodded to Mrs NT. We began.

I dove straight into the first biscuit and put half in my mouth, crunching happily. My mouth became instantly dry, devoid of any moisture whatsoever. The carefully pooled saliva disappeared in a flash and suddenly I was inhaling cracker dust. Panicking I tried to swallow quickly, only to choke on the uneaten lumps of razor sharp cracker. I broke the second half into bits and stuffed them into my mouth, bits of angular cracker lacerating my parched throat.

I wasn't laughing 1 minute 52 seconds later

A worried glance from Mrs NT told me I was behind the pace slightly, so I adopted a new tactic for the second cracker. Nibbling at the edge, I proceeded to devour the cracker in seconds, only to find my mouth now fuller than before and with even less moisture. It felt like I’d gone down on camel…

The third cracker sat there mocking me. I decided to combine my previous tactics, breaking it into pieces and then nibbling the results. This seemed to work slightly better and I managed to finish the cracker off quite quickly. I showed Mrs NT my empty mouth. She showed me a sad face.

1 min 52 seconds. Pitiful. And due to the fabulously absorbent properties of these bastard little crackers, my mouth was covered in cracker dust and completely devoid of spit. I was done.

So the world record remained intact and I gained a little bit of humility. Mr Cream Cracker World Record Holder, I salute you, whoever you are.