Italian Strip Snap

The International Man Of Mystery invents a sexy new game

Confound your strip snap opponent with a cheeky deck of Italian Playing Cards and victory will be yours

Card games have never been my strong suit. For a start, I confuse clubs with spades, and any trick involving me having to remember a card I picked out for an extended period of time is a waste of a sleight of hand just waiting to happen.

Which goes some way towards explaining how I found myself at back at the West London Love Shack playing Italian strip snap with the endlessly magnanimous and infinitely creative International Man Of Mystery.

Snap’s about the only card game I can keep up with, so my real life Mr Big cracked open a deck of Italian playing cards – which just to make it more confusing for me, don’t have numbers on them, and are adorned with coins, cups, swords and batons instead of clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds - but you can play them with any standard issue deck you have to hand.

The rules, according to the International Man Of Mystery, are for every matching suit or value, the player who didn’t say snap first either removes an article of clothing or performs an act chosen by the one who did (use your imagination for this part).

OK, so I lost, but let’s just say that Italian Strip Snap is one card game I don’t mind sucking at.