A whisky with a Lounge Lover

It is definitely way too easy to spend £20 in London; in fact, I just have at my local Tesco Metro, but that was for enough food to keep me happy and healthy until Thursday.

If you want to enjoy London, there has to be a compromise. Knowing the city and what it has to offer for free is essential, so is being thrifty about supermarket shopping. On my day out I would go to Regent's Park for a picnic.

With my £20, I would filter a litre of tap water into a second-hand Volvic bottle with a drink-through lid (cost: nothing), brew up some Waitrose Mocha Java and pour it into my trusty flask, make myself a delicious cheese-and-salad sandwich, buy the papers (cost £2) and stroll up the canal from my flat in Maida Vale to Regent's Park, where I would settle near the boating lake for an afternoon of reading and relaxation.

If it were Monday, in the evening I would buy a two-zone Travelcard (cost £4.30) and zoom to Lounge Lover in east London for its new cabaret night. It's free to get in and there's more to the night than just going for a drink - there are half-naked dancers, great music and fun people.

With my remaining £11 I might splash out on one of the frozen-whisky shots that comes with a chunk of chocolate, but at £8 a shot, I might just ask for a ginger beer on the rocks and add a few whisky shots from my secret hip flask.