Let the barbie come to you

I have been promising to do it for the past three summers, always finding an excuse - time, effort, inclination - not to arrange a seriously good barbecue. You know, the sort where everyone you know turns up for overdone sausages and underdone drumsticks, and some seriously good cocktails.

Events harmoniously conspired against the success of my last effort three years ago. The drinks were a disaster. The blender threw a wobbly, I ran out of ice, forgot to marinate my plums in brandy and ended up serving martinis in beakers I'd got free from a petrol station.

A few of the lads - we boys reckon we know better than girls when it comes to running a barbecue - took it in turns to ruin the food, talking football when they should have been tending to the chicken breasts. We had to evacuate the garden at one point to escape the billowing clouds of smoke.

The evening wasn't an unmitigated disaster, but I had never worked so hard at producing so little for so many - and all for more than £100. Never again, I vowed.

This weekend, flush with football fever and with the promise of a sun-drenched weekend, I relented - but this time I was determined to do things differently. How could I take the pain out of throwing a garden party?

I decided to take a chance with Bamboo, a do-nothing-yourself company specialising in smaller barbecues.

Okay, so it was a little indulgent at £20 a head, and a betrayal of my macho hereditary - there are few other tasks other than a barbecue that men have a compulsory duty to perform. But if this summer turns out to be the promised scorcher then Bamboo's services will be a must-have for Londoners in the know.

Call me lazy - I am - but I simply had no time on Friday to do the Sainsbury's run, get to an off licence and buy sacks of charcoal, so I booked them to come and do it all for me. And at 5.30pm, just after I got back from work, two bartenders and a chef arrived with all the necessary kit to build a fully stocked bar and working barbecue.

While they busied themselves in the garden I loafed on the couch, watching the last overs of the day's cricket. An hour or so later, after a bit of a nap, everything was done.

Professional mixologists Charlotte and Kevan, smartly uniformed, had their cocktail shakers at the ready. Chef Mike Hetherston, who normally spends his time cooking in less pedestrian venues such as the House of Lords, was looking confident, prepping food and firing up the barbecue.