Remember that clip of a completely obliterated David Hasselhoff eating a burger on the floor of a Las Vegas hotel room? Of course you do. It was the most painful video filmed by the daughter of an international star and then posted on the Internet, like, ever. If you found the image of your Baywatch hero slurring into some reconstituted meat too painful and you’ve blocked it out, it looked something like this:
Pretty epic.
But, in the same way that we would be lying if we said we didn’t rummage through friends’ bathroom cabinets whilst using their toilet, we would be lying if we said we haven’t all done a David Hasselhoff.
Come on. Tell Aunty Beck. You know you have. When you get home from a night out with a hunger that could extinguish entire species? When the only course of action is to lie with your face in the fridge, or to climb into the condiment cupboard and just open your mouth until you’ve absorbed everything, like one of those speeded-up sciencey videos of insects devouring a piece of fruit? You know what I’m talking about.
Yes, there is undoubtedly a gratuitous indignity of shoving your silly drunken face into a cling-filmed block of stilton, but let’s look at it another way. How about the glorious, unadulterated, uninhibited freedom of it! At what other point in your day-to-day life can you really throw all moral, social, personal, and hygienic caution to the wind and just pig the hell out? There are no ‘If I eat half that Sara Lee chocolate gateau it’ll definitely go straight to my hips and I’ll be left with an acute feeling of self-disgust’ worries here. Quite the contrary: your brain is saying ‘I must eat half that Sara Lee chocolate gateau. I need it. If I don’t eat half that Sara Lee chocolate gateau something awful will happen. It is my duty to eat half that Sara Lee chocolate gateau.’
And what of culinary conventions? Those suffocating dictations that tell you it is not appropriate to make a sandwich of hot buttered toast filled with Coco Pops, or that it is unseemly – depraved, even – to eat a can of cold rice pudding using a Kit Kat as a spoon? In a fit of drunken eating you can shun such stifling conventions! Stand up for what is good and true! Open that tin of sardines and that jar of peanut butter, consume the two with the same spoon, and to hell with the consequences!
Drunken eating makes food fun. Small conquests are made. It becomes paramount that you must seek out all of the sultanas in your box of Sultana Bran. You can spend whole minutes staring into a flaky brown utopia, exclaiming ‘Aha!’ when you spy one of the sneaky little buggers, fish it out with your sweaty drunken fingers, consume it, and the search continues. Do you want a packet of sultanas? No, you do not want a packet of sultanas! You want the thrill of the chase, the glory of the conquest! You want to fundamentally transform the very essence of this product: you have the power to turn it from ‘Sultana Bran’ to simply ‘Bran’! You are God!
So do not be ashamed next time you find yourself with your head inside a chicken carcass at half past one in the morning. You are only doing what is right. You, and David Hasselhoff, are merely obeying nature’s natural order. Run with it. Enjoy it. Create. Experiment. Who says sliced ham doesn’t go with chocolate spread? You are your own man.
I would like to conclude by stating that I have never indulged in such drunken eating behaviour, and I certainly didn’t do it when I got home at half past two this morning.
BECKY SAYS THINGS 
This essay helps me to solve a few mysteries. Thank you.
You’re very welcome. Feel free to adapt any of my ‘recipes’ and create something sober about of them. 😉
And if someone did happen to eat peanut butter using a hotdog to dip into the jar, and it was done as a gesture of goodwill to all humanity, I think society should thank them!
This has never happened to me, by the way. I just heard about it from a friend.
Oh God, I only heard about the the whole drunken eating thing from a friend’s cousin’s half-sister. It’s not something I encounter personally in my own life ever.
This. Is. Hilarious.
Well done.
Thank you 🙂
Every time I read one of your posts, I want to stand up and cheer. Especially love this one as it’s about food and I am about food. (my blog? foodforfun–see, all about food). So I will start by saying that the “recipes” you put forth in your post (and they are “recipes,” though very casually written) are awesome. I totally want to eat rice pudding using a kitkat as a spoon:-) The sandwich of (buttered!) toast surrounding coco pops? Brilliant! (I am a professional food person, so please believe that what I say is true:-)) I love how you think and I thank you for the freedom you’ve given me. Heading to a friend’s for cocktails tonight and now I know I have (your;-)) permission to check the fridge before heading to bed. 0-: Love you (and stickman’s) style. Just sorry it took me so long to find you.
Oh, and happyzinny’s hot dog dipped in peanut butter? Why couldn’t that taste really really good?
Hi Liz, thank you so much for your extraordinarily kind words. I’m so glad I make you smile, because that’s all I ever aim to do 🙂 I will most certainly check out your blog as I am a massive foodie! You should definitely search your fridge when you get back from your cocktails, you’ve no idea the wonders you may behold! Thank you again 🙂
The David Hassellhoff video is one for the ages. It nearly made hamburgers inedible. I say nearly because I am now eating one off the floor with a milky way bar.
It should be played on the Times Square screens at least six times a day. It’d be a great endorsement for McDonald’s. Funny you should mention Milky Ways, I’ve just used one to mop up a bowl of chilli that I found at the back of the fridge behind the tuna and cornflakes cake.
I know you binged at 2am this morning, and when you’ve fully recovered I’d like you to replace my food. Next time go home to the RIGHT HOUSE!!
Anyway, alcohol is actually meant for binging. Sober I can only eat half a kebab before I’m stuffed. Fill my belly with eight pints of volatile fluid, however, and I can slap the entire kebab between two victoria sponges and eat the lot…. it’s alchemy!
Oh god, did I go to the wrong house AGAIN?? I’m so sorry. Last time I did that I ate a whole christening cake. I was writing apology letters for months.
Don’t worry. Last time I did that I ate the baby!
Yeah, that is worse.
There was a pizza place at university that I’m pretty sure only stayed in business because it was the only cheep place to eat after the bars closed. It was barely acceptable to call it pizza.
But I bet it made a packet with all those students going mental with drunken hunger 😉
Anything tastes good when you can’t think straight.
I always wonder why people blew the Hasselhoff video out of proportion; because I can sure as hell say I’ve done that before, hell, I’ve stolen food from tramps before because I was that drunk and hungry. It just shows the Hoff is as human as the rest of us.
What is it about alcohol that makes us thing “yeah I totes want a kebab”, when I see a kebab in the day time and I’m sober I couldn’t think of anything worse!
The Hoff is the most human of all of us. We’re just scared to be that human. And kebabs are the devil’s work. Unless of course you’re drunk in which case they’re nectar from the heavens.
As disturbing as that Hasselhoff video was, it wasn’t as disturbing as Baywatch Nights.
Jeez, you”re right. I’d rather watch the tragic meltdown of an internationally adored star than the pitiful spin off of an ibterbationally adored TV show. Any day. There’s no need for Baywatch Nights. Ever.
It seems my ns have been replaced with bs. How infuriating.
Even your mistakes are funny 🙂
Me,either, Becky, I have done none any of these things. But if I did, I’m sure it was a damn good experience. It’s probably better I don’t remember…Sardines and peanut butter, salty!
Good point, the salt factor would be too much. Mouth like Ghandi’s flip flop. Maybe I won’t do that. 🙂
This is hilarious! I love it!
Thank you ! 🙂
I love all of your posts- they really make me laugh and smile XD I love all of the stickmen drawings you do- they’re awesome! Well done! (my blog isnt about food, it’s about books :D) thank you for making my day!!! 🙂
Wow, thank you! I’ll definitely be checking your blog out, I’m a book lover as well!
😀
I found your blog when it was Freshly Pressed a week or two ago and have been making my way through the back posts, enjoying myself immensely. I know this post is from nearly a year ago, but I have to ask – what the heck is a Sultana? Is it something British, or am I just woefully ignorant when it comes to breakfast cereal?
Hahaha, you don’t know what a sultana is??? It’s a dried grape – very like a raisin (surely you know what Raisin Bran is????). Sultanas are dried white grapes, raisins are dried red grapes. There, now you know EVERYTHING there is to know about sultanas 😉
Thank you for your lovely comment and I’m glad I was able to educate you!
Aha! No, I’ve never in my life heard the word “sultana” (before now) although I do know what Raisin Bran is and have even eaten it once or twice. Thank you for enlightening me 🙂
You are SO welcome.