Even I haven’t got the chutzpah to wring another entire column out of the hamster, so I’ll keep this brief and we’ll press on. Basically, it’s gone: vanished into thin air like Debbie McGee from Paul Daniels’ box. It was its third escape attempt and this time it got lucky, if you can call slowly asphyxiating behind a gas flame-effect fire or wherever it’s ended up “lucky”.

After its previous break-out, it was discovered 24 hours in, drunk on spilt soap powder, stuck behind the washing machine. It took three hours, the dismantling of a cupboard and the removal of the back of the Hotpoint to retrieve it. It expressed its gratitude by savaging my dad’s fingers. This time, it dislodged its ridiculous tube, waddled off and has somehow wedged its lardbucket body into some crevice in the house. For five nights I’ve prowled every room, armed with stinky hamster food (we know it can climb stairs), tortured that it’s starving to death, but, realistically, it’s probably got a week’s food stored in its enormous head, and enough body fat to last, well, about 14 years. One internet site says that hamsters can be missing for up to three weeks and then turn up, and another claims… oh, I must stop this. That’s 212 words gone when I should be focusing on veins, veins, veins.

Yes, there’s a genius-sounding treatment called thermo-coagulation, which uses microwaves to zap unsightly veins on the legs and face. One woman paid £1,000 to have her legs done, and it’s so not a big deal that people have it in their lunch hour without anaesthetic, giving rise to the phrase “lunchtime legs”. Personally, it’s the face bit I’m interested in. I’m getting so many thread veins around my nose, people will soon start calling me Cider Woman and pressing coins in my hand to go and get myself a comforting can of Diamond White. (By the way, if you can’t hear any scuffling, does that mean the hamster is definitely dead?)

Brian Newman, who specialises in zapping, says male patients in particular who suffer from nose veins are often wrongly cast as ale-heads. “They are tearful at the end of the procedure because for years they have been regarded as a drunk,” he says, which is ironic really, since getting tearful is precisely what drunks do.

I’d happily pay a lot more than £1k if it means I don’t end up with a complexion like an East European farmhand who’s had a hard life. No, sorry. I can’t concentrate. I thought I heard a weird pitter-patter on the wood floorboards downstairs. Now it’s gone. And it was probably a bit heavy, even for the Hattie Jacques of hamsters. Maybe it was a rat. Would a rat attack a hamster? Oh, God – maybe one of the yobbo cats outside has got it.

How long would it take a fat, lazy cat to kill a fat, lazy hamster? Do you think it would be quick? Or are we talking hours?

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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