Top tips for fighting the post-Christmas hangover

1 Pull the bed covers over your head and moan repeatedly. People dislike self-pity, and will leave you alone.

2 Drink lots of water alternating with orange juice. May not work but no harm done, anyway.

3 Gather up all last night's left-overs in glasses, wine and beer bottles, mix in a blender and gulp. When you wake, a health professional will have pumped your stomach and you'll be in bed in a quiet ward. Maybe.

4 A thick medium-rare steak with mashed potatoes. Apparently it worked for a guy who used to work here, someone said.

5 Or the famous, "Burger, fries and Coke, please". Problem with this is you have to get off the sofa to get to the drive-through window. In that case ...

6 Alcohol dehydrates you, so you need to replace the lost water. But that doesn't mean crawling to the pool and drinking it dry, as you did with the top shelf last night.

7 A cool shower, brisk scrub of the teeth, a cup of hot sweet tea and a lie-down under a leafy tree in the back yard where you can try to remember just what it was you said that made that woman slap you.

8 The famous "hair of the dog" cure. First find a dog, then start licking it all over from its wet nose to ... Before you've even got quarter the way through, you'll forget the hangover.

9 A brisk 20-minute walk, breathe deeply in through the nose and out through the mouth, then jog straight to the nearest A&E where you demand a new head and liver with a young nun as the donor.

10 Take a large glass of milk, beat in one egg, some tomato sauce ... Just joking. Not only is there no cure for a hangover, there's little sympathy either.