MANY years ago, I must have angered the gods of food who put a curse on me.

Since then, whenever I open a yoghurt top it splatters back over my tie.

I duck and weave like Ricky Hatton but, like a heat-seeking Exocet, the dairy missile always splodges on its target with a direct hit.

The result is that, despite setting off to work looking as smart as Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, by the afternoon I bear more of a resemblance to Sir Les Patterson, Oz comedian Barry Humphries' cultural attaché.

It isn't just the yoghurt. The gods are meaner than that.

There's marmalade, too.

Now I'm a busy man who sometimes eats breakfast on the hoof, slopping a dollop of thick-cut on a slice of toast while simultaneously giving the cats their Whiskas. (I know. Pretty versatile, eh?) The curse operates in a surprisingly different way with marmalade.

When they see the jar come out, our cats dive for cover... but they needn't. Marmalade always homes in on my trousers, not theirs.

I once drove to a reunion of people who went to my primary school (whom I hadn't seen for 40 years) after eating a hurried slice of toast. And it was only when I stopped at the motorway service station for a wash-and-brush-up that I spotted the marmalade spillage.

I gave it a good wipe with a damp hankie, of course, but arrived with a huge watermark on the dry-clean-only trousers around the nethers.

"Perky-Turkey," I could hear Bumstead rudely whispering, "may be able to swan around in a suit these days but he still can't control his bladder".

Jam doughnuts, sometimes bought by colleagues for office birthday treats, are more subtle. They squirt at the shirt with astonishing speed and accuracy.

An ice cream cornet is sneakier. It goes for the inside of the shirt cuff, slithering, silently, down the wrist.

Peas, when the target of even the most careful harpooning, favour the lap; tea dribbles down around the collar, soup aims for the navel and red wine, cruelly, leaves its rim on a dinner-party host's table-cloth.

My biggest challenge, though, is the biscuit dunked, rather vulgarly, in the mug of tea. I don't attempt this often these days but when I do, excited crowds might gather round me to witness the spectacle.

It is like watching the Olympic high-diving finals with points awarded for difficulty.

I find Rich Tea capable of gracefully entering the cup with only the merest drop of Lapsang Souchong landing on my tie.

But a Lincoln or Ginger Nut are both capable of a double pike and tuck before belly-flopping in with the most almighty splash.

I wear the standard napkin as a defence at meal times but it offers scant protection. An apron would be more effective but might look, well, silly.

My wife has suggested that I wear a protective suit capable of withstanding nuclear or chemical attack when eating, complete, of course, with riot-shield helmet and gas mask.

This, she believes, might do the trick in keeping the washing load down.

But then I wouldn't be able to eat.