A couple of years ago I threw away a completely decent burger.

The reason was that I’d coated it in barbecue sauce by mistake. I hadn’t tasted it before and thought I’d got a mouthful of sweepings from the ash pan. I downed a whole bottle of mouthwash trying to get the taste away.

Needless to say it happened at a barbecue – an occasion that always fills me with dread. If someone invites me to lunch in the garden that’s great, because that generally means it’s been prepared in the house and you’ll eat it in a civilised way at a table, with proper plates and real, solid cutlery.

But use the word barbecue or, worse, the letters BBQ – because BBQs tend to be more raucous affairs – and I’ll wince with horror. BBQs usually involve a lot of discomfort and stickiness. And that’s before you’ve eaten.

Everyone stands around waiting, mouths gaping like baby birds, while sweaty menfolk wield toasting forks like swords in one hand and glasses of wine in the other. It’s hard to have faith in meat cooked by half-cut men playing Gordon Ramsay. It’s either red and raw or black and charred.

That’s not to say I haven’t had nice barbecue – notice I’m using the full word – food. I have, but you have to admit, even if it looks and tastes nice, there’s always that grain of doubt in your mind as to whether you’ll need NHS Direct during the night.

National BBQ Week starts today, spelling the start of the BBQ season, when gardens and patios everywhere will be home to those weird-looking pods on legs that seem to be all the rage.

I honestly can’t understand it. What can you do on those that you can’t do on the grill in the kitchen?

I can understand why people throwing a party, with many mouths to feed, hire a huge BBQ set with a grill to accommodate 100 sausages.

But for family and a few friends, why fork out hundreds, and leave yourself with a nightmare cleaning job, when you can use your oven and carry the food outside?

Mini pizza ovens are also popular nowadays, but are no bigger than the oven in your kitchen.

And paper plates – which go hand-in-hand with BBQs – aren’t great for hacking into great lumps of steak, particularly if plastic knives are used too. The task is all the more difficult if carried out on your knee.

I realise that if any of my friends read this I’ll be blacklisted from all summer barbecues, and even their poor relation BBQs.

But change the event to ‘garden party’ and I’ll be there.