It's enough to gladden the heart and harden the arteries. The Little Chef chain which for 48 years has been pelting British motorists - including John Major - with high-quality plates of protein, fat, carbohydrate, fat, fat and an extra serving of fat, has been saved for the nation. At the beginning of the week the 234-strong network of roadside cafes, and its cravat-wearing Fat Charlie logo, looked like they were done for, along with the jobs of its 3,500 employees, after years of losses and sneering from the rocket-chomping classes. Its sister chain, the Happy Eater, with the bulimic-friendly logo of a cheery diner stuffing a finger down its throat, went a few years back. Surely the Little Chef was doomed. But then, at the last minute, a venture capital company came to the rescue: for a knockdown price of £10m it has been brought back to life, like a plate of baked beans revived in a microwave.
This is important for one reason and one reason only: the all-day breakfast, or the £6.99 Olympic, as the top-of-the-range job is now known. A few years ago the foodie website egullet.com, populated by the sort of people who like to know which field their lunch was reared in and which way the wind was blowing when it was slaughtered, invited its members to confess their guilty food secrets. The Little Chef all-day breakfast was a clear favourite.
This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Britain, it is fair to say, has few claims to culinary fame. We have a large repertoire of lead-heavy meat puddings, bound in suet-based pastry which are only really edible if steamed to buggery. We're not bad at finding uses for root vegetables that the rest of Europe feeds to the pigs. And we seem to have a particular taste for stomach linings. Think haggis and tripe. But we do know how to do breakfast. As Somerset Maugham famously said: 'The only way to eat well in England is to have breakfast three times a day.' We do breakfast better than anyone else, and the Little Chef does it better than most. Today the Olympic comprises - deep breath - 'two rashers of crisp back bacon, British outdoor-reared pork sausage, two griddled eggs, whole-cup mushrooms, crispy saute potatoes, fresh griddled tomato, Heinz baked beans and toasted or fried extra-thick bloomer bread'.
Who could argue with that? Gillian McKeith, obviously, which is a bloody good reason for ordering one. Though not with toasted bread. It has to be fried, every time. To be honest, there are a few things on the modern Little Chef menu which it is very hard to approve of. What, I ask you, are they doing serving a chicken Caesar? And who came up with the sacrilege that is the Healthy Choice Breakfast: 'A guilt-free breakfast of mixed berry puree topped with creamy low-fat yoghurt and crunchy granola'? As Catherine Tate's Janice would say: 'And this is in a Little Chef. The dirty bastards.'
No matter. We all understand how the caprices of fashion can lead even the sturdiest of cholesterol-drenched hearts away from the true path. Now, the Little Chef has been given a second chance, a new dawn if you like. Then again, at the wonder that is the Little Chef, it is always morning.
