Helen & Douglas House’s Simply Supper appeal began with a bang — a Big Bang — on Monday when the charity’s fundraisers and supporters gathered at the Oxford restaurant of that name for an evening devoted to the sausage in all its rich variety.

Simply Supper has become a familiar part of the Oxford dining-out scene in springtime. For four years, the hospice has been encouraging supporters to throw dinner parties at home at which guests are ‘charged’ a donation of what they think the meal is worth. An added dimension came this year with the involvement of the Big Bang, whose boss Max Mason is ever open to the blandishments of those backing a good cause. Besides hosting the launch at the restaurant’s spacious premises in the Oxford Castle development, and giving £1 to the charity for every meal sold on the night, Max promoted his own Build a Banger contest in aid of the charity.

Supporters were invited to dream up new varieties of sausage which the Big Bang’s principal supplier, Vicars Game, of Reading, made up for sampling. Or at least tried to: some of the ideas taxed the ingenuity of even so practised a sausage maker as company boss Owen Hayward.

While he is able to offer varieties including (on the current menu) lamb and apricot tagine, pigeon and wild boar, and Stilton and walnut, the Swimming Sausage of salmon and hollandaise sauce, for instance, was clearly a non-starter.

From 15 entries, the list was whittled down to a final four bangers which were cooked up on Monday and submitted to the judgment of a tasting panel. Besides Max himself, this included Andrew Pearl of Haddenham-based spice makers Schwartz, which is supporting Simply Supper by giving a welcome kit to each dinner-party host and a hamper prize to the top fundraiser when the campaign finishes at the end of May. Also assessing the bangers were Poppy Hanbury, the hospice’s senior community and activities supervisor, and Rosemarie and me.

Taking my seat next to Max, I viewed with considerable relief his printed list of some of the inventions we had been spared. I would probably not have relished, for instance, Kim Hall’s Spicy Clucky Choccy Doodah, which featured chicken, chilli, chocolate, garlic and cashew nuts. And I fancy that Jane Healing’s Lamborghini — with lamb, onion, apricot, cumin, pickled ginger, sesame seeds and seaweed — might have transported me at high speed in the direction of the bathroom.

As it turned out, best came out first, with Steph Brain’s Cuzza Suzza, a deliciously lively mix of pork, chilli, curry powder and coriander, earning a top rating from three members of the panel, me included. This is now to be offered on the Big Bang menu for a month, with £1 of each sale going to Helen & Douglas House.

Much admired, too, were Nick Edwards’s Beef + Wasabi, though the quantity of garlic amid the minced beef was a little alarming, and Sue Barnes’s Pork Squashage featuring pork (obviously) with butternut squash, caramelised onions, wholemeal breadcrumbs, sage and parsley.

Least popular with me, and some other judges, was Tim Wood's The Wine Swine, whose excessive quantity of caramelised apple, with the wild boar and onion, made it too sweet, almost pudding-like. But Tim, of course, can hardly be blamed for the sausage maker's interpretation of his recipe.