Just about a tenner's worth of this, that and the other

TEN dishes that, despite having the status of delicacies, are actually quite disgusting to eat:

Laver bread

Okra

Jugged hare

Jellied eels

Sweetbreads

Andouillettes

Snails

Oysters

Tripe

Those funny little Scottish meat pies with baked beans on top

Ten things that women usually have and men do not usually have:

A spare paper tissue

Dates of loved ones' birthdays

A safety pin

A spare passport photo of self

A good way of cooking left-over cold pork, five courgettes and a tin of exotic Italian mushrooms

The knowledge that, of all the funny things created by God, there is little funnier than the sight of a man wearing nothing but socks

Photographs of offspring

An ability to see that what a man fondly thinks of as an old habit is actually a problem

An effective but uncomfortable solution to that problem

A touching belief that given time, and the right woman, any man can be reformed

Ten foods we are more likely to read about than ever to taste:

Four and twenty blackbirds

Clay-baked hedgehog, gypsy style

Locusts

Pemmican

Manna

Ambrosia

Starlings' tongues

100-year-old eggs

Rook pie

Dog

Ten sources of personal social embarrassment that, however undignified, are self-inflicted:

An undone button

Discovering a piece of spinach on your teeth and knowing you haven't eaten spinach for days

Finding shaving foam or lipstick on your face at the end of the day that nobody has told you about

Shirt hanging out at the back

Getting out of a shower, switching off the shower and then discovering a well-soaped, unrinsed area of your body

Not being sure, as you prepare to get dressed, whether the underwear you are seriously thinking of getting into is fresh for today or left over from yesterday

Smelling someone else who is wearing too much aftershave or scent, and wondering, as you reel away, if you smell the same

Attempting to kiss a woman on the other cheek when she has clearly already decided that one cheek was quite enough

The sound of two strips of Velcro being parted, by you

Apologising for an embarrassing noise that, in fact, has just been made by someone else

Ten words that are only found in crossword puzzles:

Ormer

Hance

Hele

Err

Skink

Ling

Erne

Ness

Tor

Brae

Ten people who always used three names, including one quite unnecessary middle name:

John Julius Norwich

John Selwyn Gummer

Maxwell Davies

James Robertson Justice

Terence Trent D'Arby

Nat King Cole

Piers Paul Read

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ten performers who decided they could make do with one name:

Madonna

Sting

Morrissey

Prince

Liberace

Layton & Johnson

Lulu

Coluche

Arletty

Ten almost useless words beginning with gn-:

Gnomonic - appertaining to sundials

Gnosis - knowledge

Gnathic - relating to the jaw

Gnomic - consisting of gnomes

Gnomes - maxims or aphorisms

Gnomology - collections of maxims

Gneiss - kind of rock

Gnathoplasty - formation of cheek by plastic surgery

Gnosiology - philosophy dealing with cognition

Gnight - Australian farewell.