And as the strains of Roy Orbison's 'It's Over' fade away, we reach the end of a fascinating few weeks (287 weeks—Ed). All good things must come to an end: all dishes must be plated up, all lunchtime services must be hectic, and all lives must be changed.

Final weeks in previous series of Masterchef have traditionally featured three key elements:

• Cooking for the British army in an uncontroversial location
• Cooking for the poshest toffs researchers can find
• Cooking a metric tonne of foie gras for as many Michelin-starred chefs as you can lure into The Dorchester with a trail of foie gras

And guess what, that's exactly what happened this week.

Now it's over I don't have the heart to write an extended piece. I'll just reflect briefly on some of the highs and lows of the competition and some of the fascinating statistics involved.

• The final winner James made 2 mistakes in all
• Emily concocted 6,018 new taste combinations
• Emily confused Gregg with such combinations 6,018 times
• Jonny mentioned his two wee kiddies 14 times per minute (some of these were edited out in the interests of narrative flow)
• Five lives were changed, one way or the other
  
• The maximum pressure reached by the competition was measured at 12,000 pounds per square inch
• The most hectic lunchtime service occurred at Hektikos and registered 1,009 Heqtiks on the Torode Scale
• Three puds were wept over
• So much foie gras was used in the series that stocks will not be replenished until 2033
• The foie gras used at The Dorchester could be seen and tasted from space
  
• One of the chefs in The Dorchester only had a single Michelin Star each from two different restaurants: how embarrassing!
  
• Three lap dances were performed for French chefs by our finalists while dressed in ingredients from their 'signature' dishes
• 648 toffs ate for free
• One naff television drama was plugged and fed
• Jonny will be asking how people want their steak done in future
• The British Army's 'Puppies of War Rehabilitation Programme' in Malta was fed
• James will, probably, be one of the chefs that finalists have to please in future series
• John and Gregg remain the funniest, most watchable presenters on the telly

I'm delighted to spread the word about a brand new microbrewery that Miss Julie and I discovered the other evening.

Taking a lovely cab home from London's Central London to London's East End, we noticed this new enterprise on one of our cabby's intriguing, unexpected, and fruitless forays into the back streets around Curtain Road.

There are many fascinating clubs, bars and businesses lurking at the end of cul-de-sacs and 'cut-throughs' littered with JCBs and No Entry signs.

We were intrigued by the neon 'Hostility Brewing' sign and noticed that the lights were on and they were still serving. As the cab was running out of petrol by this stage, we decided we would alight there and then and see what was on offer.

It turns out that 'Hostility Brewing' have their own basement microbrewery and are currently offering a delicious range of beers, all of which were served promptly. Reading from left to right in the photograph above, we have the following Hostility beers:

• Open
• Underlying
• Unwarranted
• Brooding

and the full-strength daddy of them all, 

• Outright

Why not pay them a visit?

Hostility Brewing, Wiseacre Square, Hoxton, London E2 3AB 

(With thanks to Julie Crofts and Heather Phillipson) 

It's week 193: the final week of Masterchef, and we're down to three contestants and one of their toughest challenges yet.

They're about to face some of the most demanding diners imaginable, as they prepare to cook the final meals for three American prisoners on death row.

The camera swoops in towards John and Gregg who are in rare 'whispering mode'.

Gregg: This is really exciting, John. These three murderers have been waiting for this final meal for years and you can bet that they're going to be pretty vocal if the food doesn't live up to their expectations.

John: That's right, Gregg, and what worries me is that Dolores might just fly off at a tangent and serve up some weird variation of her convict's chosen meal.

Gregg: If there's one thing our doomed diners are going to be looking for, John, it's the ability for our cooks to turn out EXCEPTIONAL versions of classic dishes. It's going to be fascinating.

In an extended montage sequence, our three cooks (attired in black chefs' outfits) walk earnestly through Heathrow, shoulder-to-shoulder every step of the way through security and onto the plane. They sit together, laughing at episodes of 'Little Britain' on their individual seat-back screens, and even squeeze into the tiny toilet at the back of economy together.

At last they reach De Lorean Prison in Texas and get accustomed to the new kitchen. Experimental Dolores, single dad Ben and insomniac Angela wait to find out what they'll be cooking for the three hungry felons. Sheriff Campbell strides into the kitchen.

Sheriff Campbell: Okay, listen up people. Dolores, I have one order of surf and turf; Ben, you've got steak and chips; Angela, your prisoner is protesting his innocence and has been refusing all food for the last three weeks. Let's get moving, vengeful relatives are already here and we've got to fry these three in one hour's time!

Our cooks rush to their stations as John and Gregg begin to distract them.

Gregg: So Ben, you've landed steak and chips, the most popular final meal ever and a dish so simple that any flaws will leap out at the condemned diner. How are you feeling about it?

Ben: I've got two wee kiddies at home.

Gregg: We're aware of that Ben, but how do you feel about this dish today?

Ben: Well, I just have to say that this is a real honour. To think that my meal is the last pleasurable thing this man is going to experience on earth, is really quite overwhelming and I'm just so grateful he committed the crimes he did that have given me this opportunity.

Gregg: So how are you going to ensure that this is a memorable meal for our guy? Well, memorable for about half an hour anyway.

Ben: I'm going to drop the steak, potatoes and peas into a pan of tepid butter until the whole thing is pale, undercooked, and wobbly.

Gregg blows out his cheeks and looks to the ceiling. 

John: Dolores, you've got to put together a classic surf and turf platter. Can we expect any little innovations from you? Any nasty food combinations to come screaming out of your head there?

Dolores: Well, out of respect for the prisoner, I'm going to stick to the rules but I am going to make what I'm calling 'Death Roe' to sit on the side of the plate. They're just a blend of cod and scallop roe, fashioned into little coffin shapes and Sheriff Campbell is going to let me inject a little potassium chloride into each one. 

John: [Nodding approvingly] Are you not worried that your death roe might finish him off before he's had time to sample the whole dish?

Dolores: Oh no, there's not enough poison in there to do that; it'll just get the whole process going and who knows, maybe the electric chair won't seem so bad if he's already a little woozy?

John: So it's comfort food really?

Dolores: I hope so, John.

John and Gregg glide over to Angela, who is at a loose end, stacking cans of corned beef on a shelf.

Gregg: I'm sorry, Angela, but with your guy on hunger strike, there's nothing for you to do and no way for you to compete.

John: I'm afraid you're going home. It's a two horse race now. Sorry Angela, but that's what it's like in the hectic world of the professional chef. One death row hunger strike by a man with the mental age of a minor, convicted on purely circumstantial evidence amid a media-storm of unparalleled vengefulness, can make or break a budding brasserie.

Angela: Selfish bastard. He deserves all he gets.

We watch Angela walk through George Bush Intercontinental Airport alone, Snow Patrol ringing in her ears, a few buttons on her black chef's smock undone.

In the meantime, Ben and Dolores's meals have been taken through to the cells. Our cooks wait nervously for the plates to come back. Dolores's plate returns clean, with visible streak marks consistent with bread-mopping. Ben's pale yellow mush reappears almost untouched. 

It's time for John and Gregg to get the final verdicts from the two choosey diners. They sit and wait. And wait. The neon lights flicker on and off for two minutes. Distant screams echo around the prison.

Gregg blows out his cheeks and looks to the ceiling. 

Inspired by Doris Salcedo's 'Shibboleth', currently on display in Tate Modern's mighty turbine hall, I decided to turn my landing into 'Tate Tuscan Towers' and create my own metaphorical crack; one I must step over every day as I move from flat to lift, from home to street, or from interiority to exteriority, if you prefer (they don't prefer—Ed).

I first thought of staging this work last night, when I got back from the pub and noticed the crack and fumbled for my mobile phone. Since that epiphanic moment I decided to ... sleep on it and maybe put up some photos today. Nipping out for milk around 9 this morning, I renegotiated the crack and decided it was time to mount the exhibition.

Among other things, I think the crack represents the uneasy, eternal struggle between:

• Friends' Food (organic, veggie, Buddhist) and Costcutter (processed, oven chips, cheap booze)
  
• Days on the couch in pants and days in the world with a proper shirt on
• Stairs and lift
• Tenant and leaseholder
• Tennant and Lowe
• Tennents and Löwenbräu
• Amazon and Foyles
• Tolerating noise in the stairwell and taking your life in your own hands
• Buffy and Angel (both, obviously)
• Reading and writing
• Amis and Eagleton (probably neither)
• The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder
• The Godfather and Goodfellas
• Harry Hill's TV Burp and Horizon
• TLC and Destiny's Child (TLC, obviously)
• Corrie and 'Stenders (no competition really)
• Glass shard and Georgian pile

It took a humiliating trip to Venice in my mid-thirties, when my most fluent sentence was "Vorrei una camera 'Fun con Flash', per favore" for me to resolve to hire a private tutor and get this Italian thing sorted once and for all.

Of course, after three years of occasionally joyous and frequently excruciating study and practice, I still have (if you'll permit me to mangle Robert Frost) miles to go before I speak, by which I mean speak dynamically and near-fluently.

It's fairly common knowledge that when you learn a foreign language, reading and writing come easiest (helped along by all the contextual clues that seeing the language written down provides), while listening and speaking are more difficult to master but infinitely more rewarding when you make the effort.

Visiting Italy with markedly improved Italian felt like the time I finally managed to crack 'proper breathing' when swimming: everything was sleeker, faster, less painful and more enjoyable.

But if this story is to be believed, oral exams may be dropped from language teaching altogether because they are deemed 'too stressful' for pupils.

I suppose it might be seen as an infringement of one's human rights to be asked in French, German or Spanish, if you have any sisters or brothers or what the weather is like today or what kind of job would you like in the future?

Being fairly bookish, I love nothing more than ploughing through an Italian Grammar and scoring 10/10 in written tests but that doesn't stop me occasionally quacking like a duck in a Triestine coffee parlour when friendly Italians at the next table decide to chat about the latest governmental collapse.

But once the quacking has subsided, the joy of being able to participate, a little, far outweighs the deluded self-satisfaction of all those check-lists of grammatical knowledge (as important as they are in the whole delicious panettone mixture of language learning).

I do feel a twinge of hypocrisy here because, when I was taking O-level maths, I successfully applied for an injunction that forbade my maths teacher from mentioning multiplication and division, as I found these operations very stressful.

While I was happy to 'add up' and 'take away', I suffered intense panic attacks if asked to 'times' two numbers together or indeed perform 'share-bys'.

I also had a profound fear of the number 6, as our set text in English that year was the abridged graphic novel version of 'The Omen', and so all my exam papers scrupulously avoided the sixth cardinal and shielded me from times tables and long division.

I eventually scored a 'C' for O-level maths, which I asked to be changed to a 'B', as the word 'crocodile' began with a 'c' and I was very scared of crocodiles at the time.

I'm relieved to read that pupils will still be assessed on their oral skills but I think it's a shame to entirely lose the sharpening effect of an impending exam and anyway, none of this is fair on those pupils who enjoy and excel at such things.

As long as it is understood that communicating uninhibitedly and effectively is as valuable as mastering every grammatical law, it seems that we don't need to demote the oral aspects of language learning in this manner.

Of course, it may be best to ditch language classes altogether and adopt my patented 'Shouting English as a Foreign Language' methodology, or SEFL as I call it.

Simply take the phrase you would like to translate into the local language or dialect, for example, "Can I have a disposable camera with a flash please?" and convert it to: "CAN I HAVE A DISPOSABLE CAMERA WITH A FLASH PLEASE, POR FAVOR!?" The 'por favor' is optional but your willingness to meet them half way will delight your auditors and the phrase does work well in both its native Spanish context as well as in most regions of Italy.

For more information about SEFL training, please contact SEFL Associates at info@shoutforeign.org.uk