A big night in is fabulous, until the telly breaks down

I realised that there is just as much danger of things going wrong by staying at home as A Big Night Out, only with less chance of losing your purse in the back of an Uber

I love pajamas and I love my slippers. Basically, I am very happy braless and with nowhere further to go than my sitting room (Getty)

Last week, the night before I left home to embark on a brand new 60-date Grumpy Old Women tour, we decided to have A Big Night In.

A Big Night In is the opposite of A Big Night Out, but requires a similar amount of preparation. Instead of dolling yourself up and dithering over your wardrobe whilst swigging Malibu from the bottle, it means that by 7.30pm you are scrubbed of make-up, bathed and in your pajamas.

I love pajamas and I love my slippers. Basically, I am very happy braless and with nowhere further to go than my sitting room.

A Big Night In requires comfort food. This can be anything really, from a roast to toast, depending on whether you enjoy spending time in the kitchen.

The most important thing is that the food should be stress-free, so avoid anything from the Ottolenghi cook book, which will require visiting a deli miles away for the one ingredient you don’t have in the cupboard. (Tamarind paste, anyone?)

There is nothing, I repeat, nothing wrong with something that goes ping in the microwave at this point.

Alcohol? Yes, but none of the hard stuff: you don’t start knocking back the gin on A Big Night In and shots are a no-no – “if you want to go mad, go out”, is my motto. The last thing you want to do is wake up after A Big Night In and realise you’ve thrown up on your own sofa.

Before settling down for the evening, the sitting room will need sorting out. This does not mean hoovering – you simply want a tidy but relaxed atmosphere, so make sure nothing that might annoy you is within your eyeline, such as manky trainers or that bag of stuff you’ve been meaning to take to the charity shop for the past three weeks.

Shove all that in the cupboard and hide any bills that might be lurking on the sideboard. The last thing you need during A Big Night In is a reminder of anything you should really be dealing with: this is pure slob out time.

So, back to last week. The old man lit a fire, the daughter came over with her yoga mat, we threw a few downward dogs, opened some wine, scrambled a load of eggs and lashed out on the smoked salmon and sourdough.

Our mission was to have dinner on our knees in front of the box, leaving our plates on the floor to clear up in the morning. It was supposed to be the calm before the schlepp around the country.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to schlepp, believe me. I know that at 58, I’m lucky to still be gigging and that people are still buying tickets when money is so tight.

But that night was sacrosanct, a bit like a baby’s last night in the womb before it braves the unknown, and everything needed to be just right.

And then the internet broke down and, well, have you ever tried watching normal telly all night long? Our connection collapsed halfway through a very funny Xmas episode of Brookyn Nine-Nine – this is the Netflix series that makes me laugh the most at the moment. It’s the one we save for Big Nights In, the three of us chortling and guffawing, me snorting Chardonnay down my nose.

We tried the usual switching it on and off and again, we tried the other WiFi we have in the house but couldn’t guess the password, which passed the time for about 15 minutes.

I suppose guessing passwords is the 21st-century equivalent of a good old fashioned parlour game, the three of us shouting out various combinations of dead pets’ names and grandmothers’ birthdays, but to no avail.

All of a sudden our smart telly wasn’t quite so smart: we couldn’t get to our programme, we couldn’t catch up on anything decent we’d missed or start on a new box set.

We were stuck with a normal terrestrial telly, and ours doesn’t even have an inbuilt DVD player, so we couldn’t stick on an old Alan Partridge, which always used to be the DVD of choice for A Big Night In in the old days.

We flicked through the programmes on offer. There was something about “celebrities” running a hotel, which just made me cross because I hadn’t even been approached for it, and then we started bickering and I realised that A Big Night In is just as much in danger of going wrong as A Big Night Out, only with less chance of losing your purse in the back of an Uber.

My final thought, as we all gave up and sloped off to bed was, “Thank God I’m going away tomorrow and I don’t have to be the one responsible for getting this sorted out.”

Byee.