Introducing London's hottest new trend - Drunch

It may have some use, like starting the year and providing Capricorns and certain Aquarians with a spell in which to be born, but otherwise it's a pretty dreary affair, all windchill and flab.

That's why I have filled it with as much drunching as possible.

Drunch, like so many of the most radical advances in thought, seems to have occurred to many people in many places at once.

My wife blurted out the term back in December, when we were planning our retox strategy for the new year, having spent Christmas resentfully ill.

As with "God" in the Bible, it all flowed from the word - "drunch" pretty much defines itself.

It's like brunch but, with apologies to concerned medical professionals, you get drunk. We were so pleased with the idea we immediately sent out the invites and duly filled all the Saturdays of January with drunch at ours.

It wasn't long before one guest Googled the term and discovered that this ingenious combination of activities is popular in New York, where the term "brunch" already has connotations of the Bloody Mary and the Mimosa.

However, shortly after this discovery, a certain fashionable mag decided drunch was "going up" and it was clear that, like evolution back in Darwin's day, this was simply an idea whose time had come.

So what does it involve? You simply pick a Saturday and booze away all other activities.

Your uncle from Canada will not be seen for tea; those tickets to Black Swan in the evening will remain unclaimed. (It occurs to me that you could do this on a Sunday if you don't mind a hungover Monday; if you manage it on a Tuesday I take my hat off to you.)

If hosting, you should provide food, but not in a pressurised, Come Dine With Me sort of way.

The focus is really the booze - and the classic martini should be recommended in this regard. Not only is it crisply on-trend, thanks to Mad Men, its low sugar content does not leave you in the GI-slump that wine or beer are apt to boot you into.

Just be sure to keep the freezer stocked with ice and some decent gin.

Really, though, it's pretty buskable. You could drunch at one of our better breakfasting establishments, such as Hawksmoor or Bistrotheque; you could do it in Victoria Park with a bottle of White Lightning and a miniature scotch egg.

As long as the brand is strong (which drunch is) and you drink irresponsibly (which goes without saying) it doesn't really matter.

What I like about drunch, more than the first kiss of vermouth at 11am, is its blurring of the categories.

The pace and pressures of London can make you organise your social life in ready formats: there's the courtly ritual of the dinner party; the pub "catch up" where you spend so much time exchanging basic information that there is no time to talk about anything interesting; the big night out that requires you to book tickets two months in advance.

What happened to those easy adolescent days, when friendship was simply a matter of hanging out? Drunch shakes you out of the usual modes.

I'm pretty sure it will work in February too. Anyone fancy hosting?