A proper breakfast

“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,” opined Oscar Wilde, the Victorian prototype of Stephen Fry. I can imagine that Oscar’s excuse for the lack of his customary sparkling wit at the breakfast table probably owed more to his thirst for Champagne the previous evening than simply not being a morning person.

However, you are what you eat and breakfast, being one of the most important meals of the day, plays a big part in the type of person you are. Ever wondered why your boss is a total prick and such a miserable git in the morning… it’s all down to Shredded Wheat or whatever other gerbil food the sad bastard eats when he gets back from his early morning jog.

Now, I have to declare at this juncture that I am a muesli eater… but that’s not through choice. I still believe in nuclear power, sending small children up chimneys and not buying Fair Trade products (along with countless other illiberal Jeremy Clarkson thoughts) but that doesn’t stop me eating horse food (with added raisins and nuts) each morning. Dr Samuel Johnson quite sensibly pointed out that the oat is ‘a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people’. Frankly, my muesli munching is at Mrs TM's behest. She claims my irritable bowel demands it, along with ludicrously expensive probiotic drinks and live yogurt that’s sharp enough to strip paint from skirting boards.

Of course, if it were my choice I’d opt for a proper breakfast… the Full Monty. You know the sort of thing – a brace of kippers or a plate of kedgeree followed by a proper English breakfast of poached egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomato, fried bread and an optional slice of black pudding. Incidentally, note the absence of baked beans and hash browns on that list, both being an American abomination that has no place in a true gentleman’s breakfast. A proper breakfast will be rounded off with plenty of buttered toast, liberally spread with Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade and washed down with plenty of English Breakfast tea or fresh Java coffee.

Now before any doctors, dieticians or nutritionists start shaking their heads, tutting and sucking their teeth while muttering words like furred arteries, heart disease and stroke, let me remind them that it was a ‘proper’ breakfast that put the Great into Britain. Do they really believe for a moment that someone who existed on muesli for breakfast could ever have built the Forth Rail Bridge, won the Battle of Britain or discovered DNA? Of course not!

All this breakfast talk is backed up by research that has tested the effects of various types of breakfast and the impact on blood sugar levels and the ability to stave off hunger. A true power-breakfast should consist of energy-giving carbohydrates, protein and fibre in the right proportions. One of the best ways of achieving this ideal balance is by eating a cooked breakfast. And if you need any more convincing, then spend a few minutes hanging around a health food shop. If you can pick out anyone who looks healthy instead of lethargic, pasty faced and sickly, then I’ll show you a person who’s simply shopping on someone else's behalf.

Oh well, I’d probably better stop now as I think I can hear nurse on her way with my muesli, skimmed milk and orange juice. Yum!