When I convinced fifty one of my friends to accompany me to Oktoberfest in London to celebrate my birthday, I must admit I was a bit concerned it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. After going to the ‘real’ Oktoberfest in Munich in 2010 the bar was set extremely high, and I wasn’t convinced the true spirit of the event would translate all that well in an English context. But fortunately I was wrong, and as soon as we walked into the tent and saw hundreds of people dancing on the tables holding giant steins of beer I knew we had made a good decision to come. Before long we were dancing on our table too, singing along to all the cheesy songs and sloshing beer around with the best of them. It really was rip roaring fun, despite the ridiculous lack of beer taps and staff, which led to enormous queues for the bar and ultimately to our leaving early and returning to the pub we started in to continue the festivities. But by far the best bit of the day for me, besides seeing all my friends in Bavarian fancy dress, was when an East End gangster strolled into the pub and bought my entire party shots of jager bomb for my birthday. Utterly, utterly surreal, and absolutely bloody fantastic. Maybe thirty two won’t be so bad after all…