Just because I thought it was funny enough to deserve a second helping, here's the recipe to make the perfect 20th Birthday experience: Ingredients: Take one slightly barmy bloke with a Dodgy Barnet to the Basque region of northern Spain. Soak in Sangria for several days before his 20th birthday. On said birthday allow only 20 minutes sleep, then roll into main square at 7:45AM with a few thousand equally drunk/mad people. Obtain 6 large bulls of at least 700kg each, sharpen their horns, poke them with cattle prods to get them properly angry, and then release them at the drunken masses. Mix vigorously.

Now listen carefully children: one day you're gonna die.

This inevitability is indeed a bit of a downer, but none the less this thought crossed my mind on 7/7/1997 - it was my twentieth birthday you see, and I was about to be chased by 3,600 kg of angry beef…

Okay, let's set the scene a bit first: my good friend Mike and I were traveling through northern Spain and luckily happened to be near enough the Basque region to get into their yearly festivities.

Most towns in this area have their own unique celebrations, but Pamplona's is one of the most famous: over a one week period, every day 6 bulls are released into the streets to run a 800 meter length of cobbled streets and on into the stadium.

So yeah - on that day I was contemplating that yes, one day, I'm gonna die. The thing is though, if you're gonna go, doing it running alongside psychotic bulls on your birthday is a fairly cool way of exiting stage left. Am I alone here? Was I wrong to think along these lines? Well of course I was; I was drunk as a skunk, but at least such a death would still be worthy of a Darwin Award.