Who needs food? No, really. Stave off hunger pangs with the thought of a Martini at the end of the day. What would you like for dinner darling? Ooo, a Cosmo please. Body-conscious hedonists of both sexes have another trend-meets- destructive-behaviour to chew over. No, not chew, but mull over when having a drink on an empty stomach.

Hot on the heels of anorexia and “manorexia” comes a real doozie: “drunkorexia” - not eating all day, then drinking at night. The New York Times call it, soberly, “a disturbing blend of behaviours: self-imposed starvation or bingeing and purging, combined with alcohol abuse”. A blogger has another take: “It's like the Slim-Fast diet, but fun!” Doctors in America have identified a behaviour in college-age women, particularly, who want to play hard and diet hard, who apparently starve all day to offset the calories in the alcohol they consume.

One has to ask is this really new? Isn't the canapé the drunkorexic's traditional supper? Anyway, as one blogger put it, drunkorexics have to eat at some point, and that point is usually when - smashed, late at night - they come home and head straight to the Doritos and Revels. Not pretty, but very on-trend.

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