"I smiled to say 'Don’t worry!' – and she punched me squarely in the throat, jabbed both thumbs in my eyes, then stamped hard on my instep and head-butted me flush on the chin.

"As I went down, half-blind and gagging, she slammed an elbow across my cheekbone. Then she started climbing the ropes for a full-on body slam.

"I rolled out of range and staggered up. I was nearly vomiting, had blurred vision, my head was ringing, and my tongue bitten through and bloody. Condor Rosa climbed off the ropes and, without thinking, on pure instinct, I threw a hard left and right: bang, BANG!

"Her eyes rolled up to the whites, her bowler hat flew over the top rope and she hit the canvas spread-eagled in a perfect crucifix.

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"There was total silence in the room for about ten seconds. Then someone threw a bottle (Ay! Ay! Ay!), and Dave shouted, 'Time to go!'”

3 Double-barrel bunny Lisa Burns

“Armed and ready for action, this bunny guards an ATM on the island of Patmos, Greece.”

4 Cambodia’s Crispy tarantulas Photo by James Welch

The residents of Skuon – dubbed ‘Spiderville’ – developed a taste for eight-legged lunches that lasted far longer than Pol Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime, when millions of starving people would eat anything to stay alive.

This blink-and-you’d-miss-it town, 90km north of Phnom Penh, continues to serve up towering trays of crispy arachnids to passing truckers and bus-loads of curious and (usually) squeamish tourists.

Spider hunters dig up the creepy-crawlies or prise them out of holes with sticks. After a sprinkling of salt, sugar and MSG, they’re plunged into hot, garlic-infused oil until the legs are crunchy and the abdomen well cooked.

If you can get over the indisputably spidery appearance (there’s no attempt to hide the grim truth under a fancy coulis here), the hairy legs, the enormous proportions and the unidentifiable brown gunk (eggs? entrails? excrement?) in the middle, they don’t taste too bad – unsurprisingly, a little like chicken.

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