The third Sunday of the Festival was the kind that all Open Housers – and Open House visitors – dread. It was not only raining, it was throwing it down! I had big plans for this precious Sunday, to travel far and wide on a twin quest: to find the perfect piece of cake and, inspired by the intrepid junior reporters on this website, to find the Brighton Festival Open House bargain of the month.

From previous years, I knew that the best cakes could be found at the Open Houses of our very own 'virgin' Christina Ure at 12 Chester Terrace in Fiveways (Delia Smith recipes a speciality), Terri Bell-Halliwell at 15 Chanctonbury Road, part of Seven Dials Artists (healthy and Fairtrade), Sylph Baier at 3 Florence Road in Fiveways (very posh patisserie cakes, with matching price tags) and my personal favourite, Kate Osborne at 32 Stanford Avenue, also of Fiveways (her courgette cake last year was unforgettable). So I was stunned to hear that she wasn't doing cake this year! The good news is that the cake-making tradition has been taken on by her teenage son Arthur Mills and his friend Solly. If the lemon cake was anything to go by, Kate has a strong contender in the kitchen. And although their PV was a good week before the rest, Des Buckley 's Hilda's cakes at 2 Dorothy Road, Portslade made a memorable impression.