It's a shame really as last night's curry was one of the best I've had all year - I will definitely be coming here again.

Last night we went to the King Cobra, a Sri lankan restaurant in Rusholme and had traditional Sri Lankan food - they also do the standard range of 'British' curries but we thought "When in Rome" and opted for their local dishes instead and fantastic they were.

So Columbo how was it?

"Well sir it's like this, me and missus Columbo don't eat much Indian food, we normally eat Italian."

But wasn't there an Indian chef in the episode where the restaurant critic was killing off top chefs? And you ate just about everything you saw in that one - and cooked some veal steaks as I recall.

"Uh no sir, you seem to be mistaken. You are of course thinking of the episode Murder Under Glass but there were no Indian chefs, maybe you are thinking of Mr Ozu the Sushi chef."

Aah yes, and the dreaded fugu, which almost did for Homer Simpson as well.

"For someone who is very forgetful you seem pretty good at remembering tv trivia sir."

It's a curse Detectvie, a dreadful curse.

So anyway, I can't remember the names of the dishes we had, but not a single thing wasn't up to my exacting standards. The starters were good, the main dishes were excellent, everything was spicy but not overpowering, all freshly made and surprisingly different. This is the only restaurant curry I've had in Manchester where they actually used fresh neem leaves for instance. Also I think the rice was the best I've had in a restaurant ever - just perfect.

So on my scale of 1970's T.V. detective programmes, which go as follows (best to worst):