Tonight:
9°c
IT IS late in Soho and I am facing down the world dice champion.
The world champ is a former Blue Peter presenter. I have one last die. The champ has a fistful of five. The odds are stacked against me. I roll my one and conceal it under my cup. It is a four not bad, not good either.
Do I bluff? Do I play it cautious? I narrow my eyes
I report from the Perudo championships, which were held in the Groucho Club just last night. Perudo? It's the new poker, so they tell me a Peruvian game of chance and chutzpah, played with five dice and a lot of gall. It was brought to Britain in the mid-1980s by a hotelier named Cosmo Fry. Cosmo discovered the game in the Lima golf club, where he swiftly became hooked. Second most addictive thing to come out of South America, he calls it.
Cosmo explains to me that the Peruvians play the game with an infinite variety of quirks different rules in Cuzco from what you get in Iquitos. But it was Cosmo who standardised the play, hired Incan artisans to make the dice and the cups and smuggled it to London two decades ago. Stephen Fry and the late Peter Cook became known devotees.
The beauty of the game? It's all about spin. The hand you get is the throw of the dice you conceal it from the table, stake your stake on what you think everyone else has under their cup. It's luck, but the skill is in the lying.
So I'm sitting on a table of six, it's the heats, and it's down to just me and the world champ. I'm good at lying, not so sure about luck.
The champ, by the way, is Konnie Huq, but there's nothing so strange in this. It's a bit like how Al Alvarez, the great poetry critic, also happens to be a famous poker player. This is just what ex-Blue Peter presenters do to relax, if you can call this relaxing. Huq's flustered, she hasn't been this riled since the Tibet protesters made their grab on the Olympic torch.
"Four fours", I say. But she's wily. With a cry of "Dudo!" she challenges my four fours. There are only three! I am dead beat.
Huq ducks out the grand final - her crown is taken by a first-timer, one Suzanne Doyle of Stratford. Champion of the world? Champion of Soho, at least. Next stop: Machu Picchu.
