Are you a chilli rating bore? Take our test

DO you think an obsession with extremely hot and spicy food is an utterly fascinating personality trait? Take our test and find out if you might be a bit of a chilli bore.

Can you eat a spicy meal without reminding people you like very hot food?

A) Yes.

B) No. In fact I need to sample other people’s food and suggest theirs is bland and unimaginative if it’s not like taking a swig of boiling sulphuric acid, like mine.

Do you take your own sauce to Nando’s because their extra-hot sauce is too lame for you?

A) No. They have a range of sauces which are fine for every dish.

B) Yes. Usually called something like ‘Lucifer’s Jizz’, made with Carolina Reaper chillis. They’re 1,600,000 on the Scoville chilli scale, which is more than pepper spray. Yum.

Do you feel the need to correct someone if they suggest a Bulgarian Carrot is hotter than a Trinidad Scorpion?

A) No, never.

B) Absolutely. Chillies are named in an ascending order of torment for good reason. A Bulgarian carrot is never going to put you on the loo for 24 hours, constantly checking to make sure your internal organs haven’t liquified and vacated your quivering, desiccated shell. A Trinidad Scorpion will.

Are you okay with the way people pronounce jalapeño?

A) Yes, I don’t think it really matters how it’s said, everyone knows what is meant.

B) No! It’s not ‘jallapeeno’, it’s ‘hallapaynyo’, for f**k’s sake! And it’s between 2,500 and 10,000 SHU on the Scoville scale. Mexican in origin. The interesting thing about the jalapeno… [goes on for some time].

Have you suffered any ill effects from spicy food? 

A) No, apart from a temporary burning sensation in my mouth, obviously.

B) I constantly feel as if someone’s set off a napalm bomb in my rectum. It’s a horrible way to live. But eating stupidly hot food is my thing and without it I’m a personality-free nonentity whose only topic of conversation is spreadsheets.

Mostly As: You are not obsessed with hot food and probably very pleasant to have a meal with.

Mostly Bs: You have made super-hot, chilli-laden food such a large and ultimately boring part of your personality there is no going back now. Soon the hottest madras in the curry house won’t be enough and you’ll have to ask them to put some burning charcoals in it.

Six hugely successful musical artists who believed in utter bollocks

ANYONE would go a bit strange if surrounded by witless fans, hangers-on and yes-men. But these artists really went the extra mile with their unhinged beliefs.

Professor Griff

Public Enemy’s Griff was big on vile anti-semitic conspiracies. ‘The Jews are wicked. And we can prove this,’ he claimed. Perhaps he had a special pair of callipers that measured wickedness. ‘Is it a coincidence that the Jews run the jewellery business, and it’s named jewellery?’ was another insight. Everything in that sentence is wrong, and a bit like claiming all blacksmiths were black.

David Bowie

Oh no, not lovely, creative, groundbreaking David Bowie, you’re thinking. Bad luck. He actually had quite a firm belief in witchcraft, and at one stage kept his urine in the fridge to stop witches stealing it. How that works is unclear. In his defence it may simply have been the result of taking vast amounts of cocaine. So that’s alright then.

Tom DeLonge of Blink-182

Serious study of UFOs began in 1952 with the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book. Since then there hasn’t been credible evidence of a single alien spaceship, so it’s hard to see why Mr DeLonge is bothering to research the subject. Perhaps he ought to start with the question ‘Why are there no clear photos when everyone’s got a bloody camera phone?’ 

Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons 

The singer of this much-hated band litters his music with religious references, but he isn’t a Christian, he’s on some vague spiritual journey that nonetheless involves God. This sort of self-centred, wishy-washy, intellectually vacuous spirituality is typical of our age, and actually more irritating than straightforward Christian nutters who love the idea of unbelievers being tortured forever in the Lake of Fire.

Jimmy Page

Page bought Boleskine House on Loch Ness, once owned by Aleister Crowley, because it was an occult hotspot where supernatural beings would manifest. Naturally when Page moved in, not one demon could be arsed to pop round. It’s not even something you could sue the estate agent over: ‘I was hoping to be plagued by creatures of pure evil which to someone sane clearly don’t exist.‘ 

Kanye West 

It’s dodgy to mock Ye because he obviously has mental health issues, but f**k it. He also suffers from a self-belief problem, frequently describing himself as a genius or his music as ‘perfect’. As he puts it: ‘My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.’ However it’s hard to feel genuine contempt for someone who comes out with comedy gold like: ‘Humbly, I would say I’m the most influential person in footwear right now.’