Restaurant reviews by Justin Tanner, our retired food critic who thinks it’s disgusting people hand out sweets to trick-or-treaters, but not to ex-servicemen sleeping rough.

HALLOWEEN? Load of bollocks if you ask me. Another American import we neither want nor need, like Starbucks, Black Friday and taking the knee. Not sure if the last two are related.

But when in Rome be a cowardly eyetie, and some residents on my road have arranged a Halloween street party, so I decided to see what all the fuss is about. F**k all on telly anyway until I can catch up on current affairs later by wanking over Fiona Bruce on Question Time.

It’s fancy dress and everyone is expected to bring along a ‘contribution’, so off I go in my Jimmy Savile mask with a six-pack of Aldi Sainte Etienne lager. I’m not taking the slab of Stella. It’s not bloody Christmas.

Only it turns out they meant Halloween food. ‘This is for the kids,’ one mother curtly informs me. ‘We’re not here to get drunk.’ Speak for yourself, love. The mask isn’t exactly a hit either so I take it off. Some people have got no sense of humour.

And talking of outfits, bugger me with a house brick. Half of these kids look like they’ve spent all day with a Hollywood makeup artist. This isn’t a party for the kids, it’s a no-holds-barred battle for one-upmanship by the ‘full-time mummies’. 

Still, there’s free food – after a fashion – so I peruse the motley assortment of homemade offerings.

There’s ‘Eerie eyeball jelly’ with ‘eyeballs’ made by stuffing a blueberry into a lychee. I’d rather eat a real eyeball than a lychee if I’m honest. Disgusting things only fit for serving as a dessert in the curry house when you’re pissed past caring. 

There’s cookies (another f**king Americanism) topped with spiders made of icing. I wait until one precocious little shit pops one into her mouth before shouting ‘Stop! That one’s a real spider!’ Floods of tears and a look from the mother like she wants to tear my head off and shit down the hole. At least it’d fit the occasion I suppose.

And so it goes on. Sausage roll mummies whose bandages have fallen off. Cakes with black cat icing. ‘Pastry snakes’. Chocolate-coated pretzels. F**k me, there’s enough sugary crap here to keep dentists in business for the next decade. Next time I’m coming dressed as a bloodstained dentist, and I’ll tell the little shits I’m here to pull all their teeth out. No need to thank me for getting your kids to brush their teeth.

However the combination of sugar rush and cheap lager – I’m on my last can – has got me incredibly light-headed, so I ill-advisedly try some flirty banter with one of the mums.

‘You’d make a great witch with those horrible warts!’ I say. At which point she starts crying uncontrollably. How was I to know she was so self-conscious about her mole? Like I say, no one’s got a sense of humour these days.