Alec Marsh

Why Greggs is the modern-day Lyons Corner House

It's the British brand that best epitomises our times

  • From Spectator Life
A Greggs cheese and onion pasty [Alamy]

My family has a dirty secret. I’m ashamed of admitting it in writing because I feel I may be permanently marking my card in life. And not just my card. There will now be an upper ceiling against which the heads of my children will bump.

The secret is this: we go to Greggs. I know, I know; there is a time and place for such a visit – you’re catching a train and starving, for instance, and nothing but a sausage roll will do. Those are the occasions when a grown man or woman might reasonably enter such a premises and stalk away, head bowed, clutching a steak bake so hot it could strip the boron off a boron rod from the core of a nuclear reactor. But, generally speaking, Greggs is not a place for a family dining experience.

Well, it is for us. On several occasions the Marsh family – two adults, plus two nippers – have had a perfectly decent lunch at Greggs.

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