A wise sage once said "happy the man who is paid for his hobby". And for TATTGOC's resident man-of-letters Trampy, there are occasional, glorious occasions when he can combine his crippling weakness for overwrought punnery with his overwhelming desire for spicy curry by reviewing restaurants in a professional capacity for newspapers, magazines and other so-called "old media". Recently, Trampy received a commission to pass summary judgement on the newly-opened Curry Leaf on Byres Road, just the latest Glasgow venue to leap upon the runaway bandwagon of Lilliputian curry servings. With his faithful TATTGOC teammate and defacto legal counsel Rumpole Of The Balti in tow, Trampy set off to the Wild Wild West End to get the skinny. How did it all go down? Here we can present an exclusive extract from his official report:

Perhaps it was the exotic spices reacting with the coriander mojitos, but after my meal at The Curry Leaf, I had the most fevered dream. I was William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, interrogating faded movie star Gloria Swanson who, inexplicably, looked like a chicken tikka chasni. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “You used to be big,” I exclaimed. Swanson bristled beneath her delicious-looking exterior: “I am big. It’s the dishes that got small.” What the blazes did it all mean?

It meant, of course, that my subconscious had clocked an emerging Glasgow culinary trend. What began as a small wave of Indian restaurants offering tapas-style menus has recently turned into a tangy flood ...

See? Useful information presented in an entertaining fashion. That's service journalism, right there. But how does it all end? The full review has been archived for posterity at The Herald website, and if you'd like to examine the tapas-style menu for yourself, The Curry Leaf itself is online too. Could it be a future official TATTGOC destination? Your correspondent fears that two rounds of coriander mojitos for the whole crew would send the final bill into the stratosphere. But he has nevertheless vowed to return to The Curry Leaf someday to sample their off-peak thali selection.

(And yes, it has been a slow week. Don't worry – it's Jukebox Puri next Thursday.)