Falling for fry-ups is the last thing Brits need

The great British fry-up is back as soaring numbers of us use isolation to reignite our love affair with the so-called “full English” (never knowingly rejected by the Welsh, Scots, or Irish). Forget tree-hugging muesli and chia seeds. If John Bull demands beef for his dinner, he’ll have his pork at brekker in the form of sausage and bacon.

Everyone’s had their iso-vice. For the fancy, it has been a quarantini and caviar, or vegan dim sum from Hakkasan. For others, it has been lashings of vino. “I’m doing a liquid brunch, liquid lunch, and liquid supper – your basic liquid life,” confided a furloughed friend.

I don’t eat meat, and no longer booze, so for me it’s been bread, potatoes and Epoisses, delivered to my doorstep by an epicure pal. Plus secret pizza, the sole skill I have acquired during lockdown. To qualify, it must be the finest wood-fired, ordered, received, consumed and with all evidence recycled without my boyfriend noticing, an art I have got down to 45 minutes. I cannot involve him because his favourite food is salad, and he is yet to embrace the concept that is the “mentalhealth pizza”.

I haven’t put on weight

– I’m too stricken by ennui to eat three meals a day – but it is sitting differently, hovering ominously about the stomach.

A third of us are thought to have piled on the pounds during lockdown. Only a third? Surely I can’t be the only individual to have thought: “Today, let there be doughnuts for tomorrow we may die?”

I propose Boris Johnson as poster boy for the necessary belt-tightening, having come out of his brush with Covid-19 warning “don’t be a fatty in your 50s”.

If he can transform himself from Eton mess to lean machine, what excuse will the rest of us have?