The Irish Mail on Sunday

Pat’s short order brekkie roll

- By Colm McGuirk

A FULL 16 years after beating

Shakira and the X-Factor to the honour of top-selling single of the year, Pat Shortt is returning to the Jumbo Breakfast Roll – but he’s going further than singing about it.

The comedian has teamed up with ‘tech start-up with a difference’ Hosted Kitchens for Pat Shortt’s Jumbo Breakfast, to bring gourmet breakfast rolls and baps to the hungry and the hungover.

‘People might look at it and go, “Is it just the song?”’ he told the Irish Mail on Sunday. ‘But I have a passion for food.’

The Killinasku­lly creator said his foray into cuisine ‘isn’t as alien as people might think’, having owned a bar and restaurant in Co. Cork for 12 years himself.

When Hosted Kitchens got in touch, he ‘thought myself and the wife had just bought another kitchen and these guys were going to install it,’ but soon remembered being impressed by a radio interview they had done.

The Dublin-based company, founded in 2020 by Seán Murray, uses its ‘technology, expertise, and infrastruc­ture to help restaurant­s operate more profitably’, with an emphasis on home delivery.

In the case of Jumbo Breakfast, they have found 61 collaborat­ors around Ireland to prepare the rolls and baps for delivery on Deliveroo.

‘You have a kitchen in a restaurant, but you just do lunch and an evening meal maybe,’ Shortt explained. ‘So the idea is, maybe if your kitchen’s lying idle you should be using it, and making it work for you, because you’re paying the rates, you’re paying electricit­y.’

Only ‘top class’ ingredient­s will be used – as an updated version of his 2006 hit, recorded to market the new business, will emphasise.

‘I just thought it was a great idea,’ the D’Unbelievab­les star said. ‘The breakfast market is the emerging market for delivery. The evening time market is fairly saturated.’

The breakfasts are available in Dublin and will be rolled out nationwide in the coming months.

Shortt admits it only took him about half an hour to write the original Jumbo Breakfast Roll, which he released officially after a version he performed on the Late Late Show got extensive radio play.

‘I used to get an awful slagging on some radio stations – “bacon and rashers are the same thing,”’ he laughs.

‘I’m going, “But there’s a metre in it, there’s a rhythm I had to stick to … so f*** off if you want to be that pedantic about it!”,’ he says.

 ?? ?? SMaSh: Pat’s Jumbo Breakfast Roll was a massive chart hit 16 years ago
SMaSh: Pat’s Jumbo Breakfast Roll was a massive chart hit 16 years ago

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