Name: The Joan Collins hangover cure.
Age: 90.
Appearance: Surprisingly sprightly.
Can this wait? I’ve got a blinding headache. Oh dear, did we overindulge a little last night?
Maybe. I can’t remember anything that happened after I vomited a Jägerbomb across the back seat of a taxi. Well, well, well, you know what your problem is?
Poor impulse control? No, it’s that you didn’t follow the lead of the 90-year-old screen matriarch Dame Joan Collins, who has just shared her no-fail hangover plan with the world.
Fine, yes, whatever, at this point I’ll take anything. What is it? Ready? Dame Joan told the Sun that her secret is: “Tons and tons of water and stay in bed as long as possible!”
That’s a bit rubbish. What? No, it isn’t.
Yes, it is. She stays in bed for an entire day to cure her hangover. Right. And?
Isn’t she just describing a hangover? So you’re saying that Dame Joan Collins’s method of curing a hangover doesn’t count because it involves behaving as if she actually has a hangover?
Yes. It’s like saying that you cure a cold by shivering and blowing your nose a lot. Oh well, she isn’t much of a lairy beer monster anyway.
She isn’t? Oh no. Dame Joan also told the Sun that she only drinks socially, and has a glass of water between each drink.
So she doesn’t even get drunk? How can she have a hangover, then? I know. It does sound as if she just likes staying in bed a lot, doesn’t it? But, hey, she’s 90. Let’s cut her some slack.
This isn’t helping my head. That’s fine, plenty of other celebrities are happy to share their hangover cures. David Beckham takes an Alka-Seltzer before bed and a bacon sandwich in the morning, a trick he picked up from his grandad.
It’s a bit late now – all I had before bed was a cigarette. Fine, then what about Nigella Lawson, who opts for a traditional prairie oyster (raw egg yolk, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, brandy and vinegar, which you swallow in one gulp).
Are you deliberately trying to make me vomit? OK, OK. Paul Hollywood makes himself a bread and butter pudding. You could try that?
I barely have the energy to make Beckham’s bacon sandwich. Well, how about Daniel Craig’s cure? He says his hangover cure is Pedialyte, an electrolyte replacement solution you give to dehydrated kids.
Sod this, I’m going back to bed. See? Dame Joan Collins wins again!
Do say: “Drink lots of water and stay in bed, and you’ll look as good as Joan Collins at 90.”
Don’t say: “Great, now I’m hungover and I’ve wet the bed.”
• This article was amended on 26 March 2024. Pedialyte is not a diuretic, but an electrolyte replacement solution.
