YOU'RE NOT THE BBC!

It's 10:20 in the morning. The phone rings.

I leap to answer it. But it is my Big Sister. I hear myself say "Oh, you're not the BBC." Now most people in their right minds would leap at the chance of talking with my big sister. She is witty. She is charming, she has all her own teeth and is fun to be with. But I do not want to be talking to her right at this precise moment.

"Sorry Dil, but you're not the BBC. Can I talk to you later!" And I hang up. God, that's just so bad...

So why were the BBC trying to beat a path to my door this morning? Well, if truth be told, they weren't. And so I will never know the answer to the burning question of the day in the Sloman Household. Angela could have provided the final answer. We would have accepted Angela's wisdom and settled the argument of twenty years. We had agreed that she would settle it once and for all. We would abide by her wisdom. She has a Michelin Star, for goodness sakes.

She should know how to boil an egg.

Do you pop the precious breakfast egg into a pan of gentle, room temperature water and bring it delicately to the boil, wait patiently for the prescribed period of time before dipping your soldiers into the perfect runny yolk or: Do you plunge the beastly think into the frenzy of a boiling cauldron to see it crack with the massive temperature shock differential betwixt the cold eggshell and the boiling inferno of the super-heated cauldron and see your egg white spew violently into the seething water like massive storm clouds leaving you with a watery mess to drown your soldiers in?

(Have you guessed which side I am taking yet?)

As a science based student I can see the relative merits of both methods.

For the "placing the nature's little miracle for a breakfast room temperature method" I can see that you have a greater chance of success of eating an egg with an intact shell encasing the entire contents of the egg, without the soupy mess after the ingress of boiling water. However, this method is fraught with danger. If you were to take a long time bringing the water to the simmer, then perhaps the egg will start to cook more than it would if you brought the egg to boiling more quickly. This would result in difficulty in the subsequent timing of the egg.

With the "plunging the beastly egg bastard thing into the sodding boiling water and who gives a flying feck" method of cooking the egg, well, timings are going to always be more accurate.

So, we rang the BBC this morning; Saturday Kitchen to be precise, to ask the visiting culinary goddess, Angela Hartnett, what the answer should be.

And they didn't ring back. Perhaps they tried but found the line engaged. So we will never know.

Can the congregation help?