WARNING - This post may contain fabrication…

So it’s Fat Tuesday again, the day when you eat as much rich and succulent food as possible because tomorrow is the beginning of Lent with its forty days of bread and gruel. That’s what the pancake thing is all about. People used to use up their eggs, milk and cream by stuffing themselves full of pancakes before the fasting began. Very sensible I say, waste not want not.

Whenever I think of pancakes an image of a one stuck to the ceiling springs to mind. I think it’s from an old Laurel and Hardy film, or maybe a Popeye cartoon, but whatever it is I can’t watch anyone tossing a pancake without saying: ‘careful how hard you toss it, you don’t want it to stick to the ceiling’. I once said this to a chef at a quite posh restaurant as he tossed some crepes at the table. I don’t think that he was very amused because when he set fire to the brandy he made sure to get the flames as close to my head as possible. Ouch! My eyebrows.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of pancakes but once a year I guess I can bear to eat a couple, particularly if they’re served with vanilla ice cream and maple syrup or better still Amaretto. As a kid my pancakes used to come served with a sprinkling of caster sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. I could never quite understand why the lemon, it didn’t do much except make you pull a squinty face and poke your tongue out, and then I found it was a religious thing. The lemon is meant to signify the vinegar that Jesus was given on a sponge as he hung on the cross. So there’s another puzzle solved. I still don’t quite understand why we don’t simply put vinegar on our pancakes though.

In 2040 Pancake Day will fall on the same day as St. Valentine’s Day. What an opportunity for the supermarkets and card manufacturers. You’ll probably be able to buy all sorts of hybrid goodies - a Pancake Day/Valentine’s Day frying pan in the shape of a heart, ready mix batter that is coloured red, a valentine’s card in the shape of a pancake, a dozen red pancakes in a heart shaped box, a wooden spoon with ‘Batter Me’ or ‘Stir Me or maybe even ‘Whip Me’ inscribed on it in flowing script; the possibilities are endless.

The world’s largest pancake was created on August 13, 1994. It was 49ft 3in in diameter and weighed almost 3 tons. It was made and flipped in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England.

Okay you’re safe now, I’ve finished. That’s enough about pancakes. There is one untruth hidden in this post though. One little porkie pie, something I made up, an untruth, a fiction, a fabricated deviation from the actual. Anyone want to have a guess what it is?