The cooking and serving of a breakfast bap is not I think a difficult thing. The Real Food Company at Newcastle Airport have however demonstrated how wrong I can be.

At 8am in the morning facing a hard week of work I decided to treat myself, not having time for a sit down breakfast, the ‘breakfast bap’ looked like a good compromise consisting of sausage, bacon & egg. At £5.99 it was expensive – but this was in an airport. The catering assistant reached behind him and pulled out a pre-cut roll, my heart sank a little. One sausage was picked up and placed on the bottom half and the tongs returned to the dish .. but no .. it was not a second sausage but two pieces of bacon. Imagine my reaction then when the tongs are opened and the two rashers returned to their home. A second dip in and single solitary folded up sliver arrives to join the lonesome sausage in it’s flour encrusted home. By now my expectations were significantly reduced but as it turned it out the culinary highlight was to be the egg – which was at least cooked on the spot. The bap now assembled was handed across and I in my pre-breakfast fog actually paid for this.

I sank into the faux leather seats and examined the construction before compounding my error of buying it by attempting to eat it. The ‘bread roll’ had the consistency of cardboard – must have cost 5p at the most. The sausage tasted like it had a good helping of ingredients from the same cardboard factory. The bacon and egg had in effect no taste whatsoever.

Now a roadside butty van will produce you a sausage, bacon & egg butty for about £3.50 – it will be overflowing with sausage, have at least a couple of rashers and you’ll be catching egg from the moment you get hold it. If I’m going to get charged double that and you want to me to be happy about it, I’m going to want a seletion of fresh rolls to choose from, sausages with at least three accurately named flavours, bacon from a pig with a double-barrelled surnam name and invitation to tea from the chicken that lays the eggs

Unless of course there’s a worst butty in the world competition – in which case Newcastle Airport is going to win.