My recipe for a perfect martini? Be bloody careful who makes it

GIVEN THAT I suspect anyone searching for their personality in a newspaper column simply may not have one, I tend to avoid those occasional "this is what your order says about you" stories. But as I send back bad martinis, I suppose I'll concede that some food and drink preferences really are idiosyncratic.

- David Ellis

Having for a while had a feeling bone-dry gin martinis were sending me tonto, I tested the theory a couple of years back at the most sedate place I could think of. Carpeted St James's fish palace Wilton's, 281 years old this year and still boasting most of its original customers, is not the sort of place wild nights tend to kick off. So I had one there. Suddenly, I found myself in Soho, stupefied on Dean Street, with a case of the 3ams. And so that was the end of the straight gins for me. The Ellis martini these days is this: dry vermouth to the depth of two beer mats in a chilled glass, topped to the brim with gin and vodka in equal proportion, both gloopy from the freezer.