Best Full English Breakfast Ever, Except Maybe for the Next Day's

Greetings, gentle readers.

I have been travelling recently, and my travels took me to the Ol' Dart. When in Rome, I like to eat cotechino, as the Romans do. So what else could I do in England but try the Full English Breakfast (FEB)? In the space of a week I managed 3 FEBs. All in the name of research (and for the make good of the glorious sausage empire back home) of course.

The first of these FEBs was at the Mountbatten Hotel in Monmouth St, Covent Garden. It just happened to be free, in compensation for my room not being ready when it was supposed to be. And just as well it was free. A feeble buffet jobby, barely kept warm and with black pudding that had the taste and consistency of sawdust, so the less said the better.

The second and third were from the same venue, Brown Betty's in St James Street, Nottingham. You see the first one was SO good, I had to go back the next day to see if I had just managed to fluke a good result - a flash in the pan, if you will.

But the second was a carbon copy. The only difference was that I asked the chef to make the black pudding a little crispier and he happily obliged. That and it came with a bit of lip after the night before's cricket result at Trent Bridge.

Imagine my surprise when I checked out the BB website to find that the sample pic of their FEB looked EXACTLY like the meal I had. It wasn't put together by a stylist, but a good ol' fashioned English cook who really knows what he's doing and doesn't mind obliging travelling Aussie cricket fans who like their black pudding bronto crisp.

Anyway, the FEB consists of toast, bacon, sausages (a nice English pork variety), black pud, stewed tomatoes, baked beans with onions and more bacon, fried potatoes and mushrooms. Plus tea or coffee for all of a FIVER. A FIVER, I tells ya!

And it is HUGE. In fact, if you are heading off to Trent Bridge for the cricket, I STRONGLY recommend that you load up with a Brown Betty's FEB before heading off, to save yourself getting bent over the table for a GBP 6 grotty roast pork roll!

And if you're really lucky, the motherly proprietor of Brown Betty's (I'm guessing her name is Betty but I didn't ask) and her two sons will keep you entertained with their friendly bickering and impromptu singing and dancing to the radio. They told me the Aussie cricketers eat there too, so it must be good, although I didn't see any of them on my two visits. And they were staying around the corner from all reports. (Betty's Boys thought I must have been a fan of Merv Hughes, given my moustache was an obvious homage. Right again.)

So when next in Nottingham, take a short stroll from the main square towards Maid Marian Way along St James Street and tell 'em Kevin sent you.

(They kept calling me "Kevin" as I was wearing my KEVIN 70,000,000,000 t-shirt. I tried explaining, but it didn't really work, so I agreed that Kevin was my name and that 70,000,000,000 was my popularity rating.)