It was any boozer’s idea of bliss: a cocktail so large that you could not only drink it – in truth, just the tiniest part of it – but actually float around on top of it. At a time of year when most of us are eager for alcoholic indulgence, the invitation to sample both activities could hardly be rejected.

Since the person doing the inviting was my godson, James McLardy Smith, participation in the unusual experience being offered was as much an act of duty for me as a submission to pleasure. Such a duty could hardly be shirked, even though there existed the possibility that a third activity – a swim, even a Duke of Clarence-style drowning – might become an unplanned addition to proceedings. (Mercifully, it did not, either for me or for anybody else.) I thought James was pulling my leg when he first told me about the Architectural Punch Bowl, which was being created at 33 Portland Place, in London, in a collaboration between Courvoisier and Bompas & Parr.

The first company needs no introduction. The second, for whom James is working, fashions spectacular food experiences that have as much to do with art as with eating (and drinking). These have included a 2,000-person Jelly Banquet at University College, London, an eight-course Black Banquet for the London Design Festival and Alcoholic Architecture, a walk-in cloud of breathable gin and tonic.

Three doctors worked on this last, to calibrate the potency of the cloud. For the Architectural Punch Bowl, there was six months of consultation with UCL to establish how to turn a building into a punch bowl. Consulting engineers Arup provided expertise to ensure 33 Portland Place did not collapse under the weight of alcohol. There was, of course, much to be done, too, concerning the ‘elf ’n’ safety’ implications of people boating across their drink.

Inspiration for the wheeze was supplied by Admiral Edward Russell who in 1694 created a punch bowl so large that his guests – more than 6,000 of them – were served by a small boy rowing across it. Ingredients included lots of brandy, lemons and limes, and nutmeg.

Instead of revisiting this recipe for their much larger (25,000-person) punch, Bompas & Parr organised a competition to find a new one. Entries came from all over the world, some of them pretty outlandish and involving, for instance, whole fruit trees and erupting volcanoes as a garnish.

The winner, decided upon by a 13-strong panel of judges, was called The Emperor’s Shrub. Its principal ingredients are two parts each of Courvoisier Exclusif brandy, pomegranate juice, cranberry juice and seasonal berries, with one part each of sugar, water and Berry Shrub (a blend of berries, sugar and vinegar, which I remember – in its manufactured form – as a popular mixer with rum).

It tasted rather good, if a little sweet for my palate, as I discovered on my Wednesday evening visit to 33 Portland Place. This was a property of some notoriety, I was told by another guest. It had been a venue, he said, for much rock star revelry, for lessons in pole dancing and for meetings of clubs for various types of fetishist. An ideal place, then, to be taken to by one’s godson!

An ideal place, certainly, for Alex James in the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll persona he embodied in the heyday of Blur and which he describes – those bits of it he remembers! – in his amusing autobiography, A Bit of a Blur. These days, the band’s bassist enjoys a much quieter life on a 200-acre farm in Kingham, a father of four, a maker of cheese, a writer for the Spectator and an attender of opera performances. (He was at the New Theatre last month for WNO’s La Traviata, starring his friend Alfie Boe as Alfredo. I know this because I arrived to find him in my seat. I told him to stay put since ‘his’, on the other side of the aisle, was just as easy of access.) No doubt as a consequence of his foodie connections, Alex had been at the Architectural Punch Bowl the night before me, when pictures of him floating on the drink were taken. I am using one of these today and the shot of him (right) instead of some of me doing the same things that I caused to be taken on my disposable camera. This proved to be all too disposable; I lost it on the way home from London.

The photographs are sure to please Blur fans but will doubtless disappoint my many readers who complain that there are far too few pictures of me in this column. I shall try to do better in 2010.

Happy Christmas to you all.