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5 stars: Pizza in our time, 4 stars: Pizza cake, 3 stars: Give pizza a chance, 2 stars: Codpizza, 1 star: Rest in pizza

Vogue is having a writing competition. There’s probably just enough time to get your entry in, if you hurry. And hurrying’s the best way to write for Vogue. What I particularly like about this literary competition, as opposed to all the others, is that they ask for a photograph, which seems sensible. You simply can’t get away with looking like Charles Dickens or a Brontë today. Author pics count for at least 50% of sales, and does Vogue want to have some ugly troll on its contributors page? I think not.

Dash off your entry, then concentrate on getting a really good headshot. A word of warning: Steven Meisel is so last year. If you want intelligent but naughty, with a hint of louche mystery, then go for retro Snowdon. If you’re more chick-lit and up for it, Terry O’Neill is very of the moment, with a big belt. If it’s misery lit of the “No, Da, not with the rubber hose” type, then John Stoddart’s your man. Good luck, and remember Vogue’s literary motto: a picture is worth a thousand words. Or two thousand if it’s by Mario.

I once had to judge Tatler’s humorous-writing competition. It was a deadpan thing, like watching painters die — the most effortfully chronic collection of constipated whimsy, punning slapstick and tomfoolery. I learnt a useful lesson: the opposite of comedy is not tragedy, but embarrassment. The horrible rictus of trapped punch lines and strained setups. After a weekend of reading the Christmas-cracker dross and after-dinner aperçus, I sent in a memo of resignation, saying I couldn’t stand it any more, that I’d rather be forced to live a life as a metal Mozart street mime in a shopping centre on Moss Side than read another Day-Glo line.

I’d always imagined that the worst thing that could happen would be to be buried alive; but I realised it would be to be buried alive with whoever came second in the Tatler humorous-writing competition. I had to laugh: my resignation letter won.

We’re considering having a bit of a lit award here, in the manner of the famous Hemingway write-alike competition. All you have to do is offer to make up alternative-medicine advice in the manner of Jeremy Clarkson. The best entry probably won’t be read by anyone.

One of the great bonuses of the imminent grand depression is that it looks as if the first casualty will be the utterly bogus and cynically manipulative organic-food movement. The vertiginous ascent of costs has been a straightener for restaurants; apparently, cheap, simple dishes have doubled or tripled in price. At the same time, customers are more price-conscious. So, using organic ingredients when there is no discernible taste or digestive benefit, only the mild scent of fashionable self-righteousness, is hardly worth it.

While restaurants try to absorb some of the extra costs, the first thing to go is the unnecessary labelling. Which is good news if you’re an organic chicken: hardly anyone can afford to eat you. Mind you, one restaurateur told me he’d calculated that the customers who a year ago ate out four times a week are now eating out three times, and are spending one course and one drink less. It’s cut his profit by 30%, while his costs have increased by 80%-120%. So, out go the organic farmed salmon, the happy-clappy clams, the privately educated pigs and the house-trained lambs. Restaurants are desperately hunting around for soothing adjectives to preface their dead meat. Perhaps we could make it a competition. I’d particularly like to eat “freedom beef”, “meadow-fresh salad”, “semi-detached chicken”, “sustainable wasabi”, “home-schooled sea bass”, “moral oysters”, “nest eggs” and “rough-trade chocolate”. And how about “onanistic milk”?

I was in Scott’s last week and the Blonde had milts on toast. The table was of the opinion that they were herring roes; I said that no, on a blind tasting, I thought they were herring sperm.

To which all and sundry, including a quartet of waiters, spat opprobrium upon me for being disgusting and a foodie pervert. One woman inquired, as if codpieces wouldn’t melt in her mouth, how a tiddler of a fish could produce such copious quantities of salty jism — and how, pray, was it harvested? With a fishwife offering pescatorial happy endings? Were they done up like kippers? Perhaps herring was sent off to the water closet with a specimen shell and a copy of Nude Mermaids in Seaweed.

Well, I’ve looked it up and, sure as eggs is eggs, milts is fish sperm. Herrings may look like little chaps, but when the chips are down, they come on like Premier League spit roasts. They need the volume because the money shot of fish congress, as in porn movies, is achieved separately. Eggs are deposited and the male has to cover them with the organic hollandaise. It’s not just a question of not being able to feel the sides: herring have to cry me a river and toss me an ocean. Soft roes on the menu sound like lady eggs, but they’re man fat. Don’t be squeamish. Milts, or soft roes, are fantastically good for you: jam-packed with omega-3s, wriggly protein and lurve. I hardly need add that they’re much tastier than the real thing, though not dissimilar.

This week’s restaurant used to be Mash, which had its own brewery, so at least it could drown its sorrows when it went bust. Now it’s called Vapiano, which, they tell me, is a phrase or saying in Italian that means something like “slow things come last”, or “surrender before dishonour”. Which is odd, because this is a fast-food restaurant, and the last of the really great good-time concepts. It’s like a dinosaur that has turned up just in time for the ice age. What the new austerity food doesn’t need is a brand-new guzzling concept, especially one with its own credit card. When you get in, they give you the card. You then browse the counters, order Italianate dishes and get swiped; as you leave, they swap it for a real credit card. This is, essentially, a complicated version of the traditional Italian bar where you pay for your food before you eat it and give the receipt to the barman.

Here, it’s essentially pasta, pizza and antipasti. We ordered a couple of pizzas and the chef handed me a mobile phone. There's so much immaculate conceptualising here, I wouldn’t have been surprised had the waiters been shepherds and wise men bearing gifts. Actually, there weren’t any waiters at all. You’re supposed to do most of the work yourself. The phone rang; I collected the pizza, which seemed to be the wrong way around, as though I’d been called by Domino’s. Unlike Domino’s, it was fresh and hot and a bit dull. The salads were large and enthusiastic, rather than authentic, and not much better than at most sandwich bars.

The biggest disappointment was the pasta, which is cooked in front of you on a clever series of purpose-designed woks. We had carbonara, bolognese and arrabbiata. The pasta is made fresh on the premises and boiled in wire baskets. Fresh, undried pasta is rarely an improvement on packet; it’s too close to being boiled dough, and these dishes all stuck together like soggy worm casts or duck bread: really not nice. The chairs and tables are a strange mix of Montessori bar furniture and departure-lounge chic — none of it is comfortable or puts you at ease. In fact, all the different bits of this concept mitigate against a comfortable, relaxed or pleasant dinner; it wasn’t busy enough to have generated an atmosphere.

I counted nine cooks, which is not enough to spoil a broth, but more than enough for a fast-food pizza-and-pasta self-service joint. The dishes cost between £5 and £7. I suppose it would work out at about £20 a head, which isn’t a vast amount, although the profit on pizza and pasta is the largest in all catering. Still, it’s quite enough when you’re competing with Pret and takeaway lunches.

The simple test of all concepts is: is it an improvement? And on every level — convenience, service, comfort, taste and amusement — the answer here is no. I asked where all these ideas had come from. I should have guessed. It turned out to be a franchise that was the punch line of a very old Euro joke: this is the Germans improving Italian food.

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