Last week, I developed a violent, sinister bout of hiccups that sounded like the devil had possessed my vocal cords. This was unfortunate, as I was due to go on the radio to talk about God (or, more accurately, the absence of him/her/it). I had hoped to sound rational and reassuring, but would now unexpectedly be retching up the bowels of Satan. This was not, I suspected, the scenario the producers had imagined when they booked me.

The Mephistophelean hiccups started at 7am, when my door buzzer sounded loudly. I fell out of bed, picked up the intercom, and opened my mouth to say hello – but instead, my throat made a noise reminiscent of the most sofa-clutching parts of horror movies. By the time I'd recovered enough to talk normally, the anonymous and probably traumatised caller had departed.

For the next three hours, I held my breath (not continuously), but my ribcage kept convulsing and the embarrassing noises refused to subside. I felt like wearing a badge saying "this has never happened to me before".

At 10am, my friend came round and laughed at me. "This," he pronounced, "is your penance for all your atheism – a plague of hiccups."

I told him to shut up, timing the phrase carefully between what sounded suspiciously like burps.

"Do you want me to try and scare you?" he suggested.

"Will that get rid of them?" I asked hopefully.

"No," he admitted, "it'd just be fun."

After I'd kicked him out, I Googled "hiccups". Surely they had to abate soon? Apparently not: a man called Charles Osborne reportedly had the hiccups for 68 years, from 1922 until 1990. He first began his award-winning run of hiccups while weighing a hog for slaughter (an activity I made a mental note to avoid) and managed to marry and have eight children, despite hiccupping through his wedding and subsequent procreative acts (bringing a whole new meaning to "coitus interruptus").

Keen not to become Osborne's successor (even if he is in the Guinness Book of Records, a feat I shall probably never achieve), I called my mother and asked for her help. She advised me to "drink forwards from the far side of a glass – that always works". It didn't, but perhaps that's what happens when Beelzebub takes up residence in your throat – it's going to take more than a simple swig of water to dislodge him. (I'm sure Charles tried the "water" trick too, and it definitely didn't work for him.)

For the rest of the day, I attempted several progressively more spurious cures, which included drinking copious amounts, mentally ordering the hiccups to go away, and trying valiantly to forget about them (which is difficult when your chest is being racked with spasms every 10 seconds).

The radio show drew ever closer. Desperately, I tried to modify the hiccups into delicate, ladylike "hics" by changing the shape of my mouth, but was still loudly emitting a cross between Lucifer and a terminally ill frog. I briefly considered cancelling on the grounds of dignity, using a less risible excuse than "I have hiccups", but only had the producer's phone number, not their email address, and sadly wouldn't have been able to tell them without hiccupping.

Five minutes before I was due to go live on air, the frog was still croaking, yet sadly had yet to croak. The engineer called up and asked if I was ready, and I managed to say "yes" twice without alerting him to my vocal deviance.

As the DJ introduced the segment, and asked the first question, my chest convulsed, and I felt my heart speed up and my hands go clammy. I braced myself to make the evil noise, and for the inevitable surprised laughter in response – but as I hesitantly started to speak, I realised that my speech was suddenly uninterrupted. At first, I wondered if it was the cruelty of false hope, but no – everything was normal. My ribcage was still, my voice calm, and nobody had a clue that I had spent the day suffering demonic possession. It was both uncanny and anticlimactic.

As I replaced the receiver, I thought of poor old Charles Osborne, the hog-slaughtering octodad, and wondered if he was now hiccupping in his grave – thinking that, if only he'd dreaded going on a radio show, life could have been so very different.