Hot under the collar

This summer has been great for barbecues but a horror for unwilling chef Gerry Moran.

The man who invented barbecues should be barbecued. Why? Because it's the most frustrating, tiresome and painstaking way of cooking food. It takes 10 minutes to fry a few burgers ia pan. It takes an hour to cook them on a barbecue.

Barbecues are bad news. I thank God the sun doesn't always shine in Ireland. I thank God because I couldn't cope with non-stop sunshine and non-stop barbecuing. One barbecue each summer I can just about handle. Two would cause problems. Three would bring about marital breakdown. Any more would leave me on antidepressants.

You must be of a certain disposition to host a barbecue. And you mustn't be hungry. You must never be hungry. At least not at my barbecues. Being hungry at a barbecue is the greatest torture I know. It's not so much the great outdoors but the small garden that causes the problem. That is to say, fresh air. Fresh air whets the appetite like nothing else. Except maybe two or three cans of cool beer.

At barbecues you've got both: fresh air, chilled beer and coals that take half an hour, at least, to warm up. During which time your hunger is building up and up until you're tempted to chew a bit of raw meat just to ease the pangs. And even when the coals are white hot and ready the food has still to be cooked. Patience, we all know, is a virtue. But at barbecues it is crucial. You must be patient with sausages that spit grease on to the coals below, causing minor eruptions that leave the sausages black and blue but not entirely cooked. You must be patient with meat that cooks perfectly to the north but remains red and raw to the south. You must be patient with victuals that slip through the grid and burn to a cinder before your eyes. Your hungry eyes. Your very hungry eyes.

And all the time the smell of charcoal and cooking wafts in to the evening air, teasing your taste buds, torturing them so you want to cry out - "in anguish and in pain, I am leaving, I am leaving" - but the host has to remain. So you have another can of beer instead.

That's another thing that suffers at barbecues: sobriety. It's a catch-22. You're starving but there's nothing to eat, or nothing ready to eat, so you "quench" your hunger with another beer. And another and another. And now you, the cook, the chef, the maître d', is sozzled while the food sizzles.

Different meats demand different sizzling, however. Hence you have black sausages, brown burgers and steaks that look like Bloody Marys. And now the guests are getting anxious. Actually, it's not so much anxiety as starvation. Some of the guests, you notice, are salivating profusely while others are gnawing the legs of the table.

Ah, but, finally, finally, we are ready to eat. Almost. The victuals are cooked but the salad has still to be served, the coleslaw rationed, the potatoes portioned and the wine opened. By which time the guests are intoxicated, the kids are agitated and every bee within five miles has zoomed in for the kill.

But here's the best part. Here's what makes barbecues such wonderful fun: we're so hungry and tipsy that we devour everything, and I mean everything, including the bees, with relish. And to strains of "Lovely", "Gorgeous", "Very tasty" and "What is it?"

What is it? Food, glorious food, that's what it is. Barbecued food. Burned food. Blackened food. But what do we care? We're starving, we're pickled. We're barbecuing, for God's sake. So, hey, let's crack open another beer.