So, I have this weekly Monday evening appointment in London's West End with Tim, at around 7pm, before we do the Resonance FM show at 8.30. This is generally spent sitting somewhere in silence, looking into the middle distance and trying to think of weak puns with which to lace the programme. But lately we've come up against the problem of where to meet up. For a while, the cheap and cheerful Gaby's on Charing Cross Road was the venue of choice, but Tim and I were getting so sick of pitta and falafel – even though, as pitta and falafel goes, it's pretty good – that we've had to go wandering in search of fresh quarry. Last week, in a hark back to student days, we ended up at Pollo's and subsequently decided that their budget pasta selections weren't appropriate for high-flying radio broadcasters [cough] such as ourselves. So last night we wandered up Greek St looking for somewhere suitable for a thin vegan (Tim) and a half-Welsh curmudgeon (me.)

We immediately discounted Pizza Express – lest Tim repeat his perennial gag “I'd like a Quattro Formaggi, but without cheese” – and The Gay Hussar, Hungarian restaurant frequented by Labour politicians, lest we get landed with a £120 bill (plus 15% service.) We ended up in Tai, which does a buffet of vegan Chinese-style food for £6 a head. The only reason I mention all this is because of the stunning range of “pretend meat” they offer. They haven't moved on from the notion that vegetarians need to have something that reminds them of seared animal flesh to make them feel comfortable at the dining table. Thus we had pork, beef, and some quite ludicrous king prawns, but all, you know, pretend. I wish I'd taken a photograph of the king prawns. They were so pumped up with orangey pink food colouring that the subsequent radio programme resembled the excited rantings of a couple of hyperactive toddlers. And all the pretend meat started to play havoc with my head; I started wondering if the mushrooms, broccoli and rice were indeed real, or merely the brainchild of a mad scientist kidnapped by a WC2 Triad Gang and given the task of winning back the hearts and minds of London's vegetarian community.

The show was workmanlike and efficient. At one point, two men called William and Edward phoned in on line 1 and line 2 respectively, arguing about who had met the larger number of famous people, in order to secure themselves some tickets to the Luciano Berio festival. Edward had made a robot costume for Kylie Minogue, William had met Johnny Vaughan at a service station in Ripley. And the Meals On Wheels Of Steel competition got off to a cracking start. I'll present the results below:

In the Indian Restaurant:

Chicken Biryani Lennox
Bombay Potatony Bennett

In the sweet shop:

The Tobleronettes
REM & Ms

In the Italian:

Garlic Bread with Mozzarella Fitzgerald

and in the local pub:

Toad in the Hole

er, SouperTramp

Roll on next week's programme for even more dubious and short-lived humour along these very lines.