Another bad habit. That wine, plus the hat and the bag, is from this Spanish skip. At the height of the addiction I was going through thirty packets a week. It was an anti-social pastime I became desperate to rid of. My health was suffering, as were my finances. The cravings would keep me awake, and when I got my fix, I didn’t even like it that much. An addiction to Pringles is a nasty habit to crack. Once I popped, I’d stuff them in my gob with the same frenzied action as the Cookie Monster.

Conventional, drug-controlled Western methods had failed to wean me off, and as no arm patch had yet been developed, the only alternative was the subtler, more mysterious ways of homeopathy. They promised to cure anything from anthrax to haemorrhoids.

“Of course we can stop your desires for Cheesums and Original,” said Dr. Rhuparjee on the phone, and any sane person would have believed him.

Dr. Rhuparjee welcomed me warmly into the surgery in his stately home for the first session. He spent the next forty minutes ranting about the solution to India’s economic crisis before listing his medical successes. “Only last week I cured a gentleman of impotence in this very surgery,” he told me.

He listened keenly as I explained at length the tingle in my veins when I crammed in the crisps and the discomfort when my stomach was full but my taste buds screamed, “More!”

“I have just the thing for you,” he said. “My wife bought me a machine for Christmas and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to use it.” I felt like Dr. Rhuparjee’s medical guinea pig, but if this was what I needed to go through to end my addiction, I was willing.

His $8000 box was the sort of machine my class used to play about with in the school science lab before the teacher arrived. Dr. Rhuparjee strapped me up like the demon in Hellraiser. I had wires and electrodes bound around my head, steel rods in my hands. My bare feet were placed on metal plates.

“We will target the malfunctioning part of your brain,” the good doctor said. I feared I'd turn into The Incredible Hulk.

Dr. Rhuparjee held out what looked like a chrome dildo. He jabbed me with it on the chest, and then on each arm. A loud farting noise emitted from his machine after every poke.

“It’s your hands! It’s your hands!” exclaimed the doctor when a picture of them flashed on his screen. “This is the problem. We can fix this.”

He pressed a button and what looked like a train ticket came out. “Tape this to your side for one hour each day.”

I was given a batch of pills. They would stem my addiction, insisted the doctor. When I checked on the Internet I discovered they were used to suppress milk in bitches.

Dr. Rhuparjee drew up a list of forbidden foodstuffs. I was to live without wheat, eggs, sugar, salt, dairy products, chocolate, alcohol, and fruit peelings.

He put me on a soya and yak semen diet. I was forced to munch rice cakes and dried prunes all day. The smell from my arse could have dropped a horse. One night I kept the window shut and nearly gave myself methane poisoning.

“Don’t worry. We have pills for flatulence, too,” assured Dr. Rhuparjee when I called to ask if this was normal.

There were the usual withdrawal symptoms – nausea, sickness, and insomnia. Soon other sideeffects began to manifest. I developed a hairy breast – just one. I got strange cravings for hay in the night. Animals would scatter in my presence.

Some would call Dr. Rhuparjee a madman. But the truth is he cured my Pringles addiction. With the odd exception of waking after a night on the piss and finding crumbs on my belly and an empty Cheesums tube by my side, I’ve been dry for over six months.