Warning – this column could seriously damage your health, and your waistline! A great deal has been said this week about the news that the great British breakfast is gradually being overtaken by new fangled things like croissants and café latté and the like. So I can't let it go without adding my own feelings. But stop right there. All you who are worried about calories, carbohydrates, cholesterol or high saturated fat either on or off your body, cover your ears, avert your eyes and don't read on. For the rest of us, the Great British Breakfast, hereafter to be called the GBB, is an institution and not to be tangled with. Each to his own, of course, but there's nothing like it anywhere else and it is up to us, the Association of GBB Aficionados, to fiercely protect it. I wouldn't suggest that anyone has this repast on a daily basis, although it contains nearly all the nutritional needs of the day in a single meal. Sadly, it also contains a lot of the things we shouldn't eat overmuch of, especially as its other name, 'a good fry-up' indicates that those ingredients are, if done properly, nearly all fried. But it's the tradition we must keep going. We can't let baguettes and brioche win. We've fought Euro laws to keep our sausages as they should be kept, moist, full of pork and not containing any funny foreign ingredients. We've suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous attacks on our eggs from various quarters, salmonella only being one of them. We need to preserve our heritage, if not our waistlines. The danger at the moment is not from officialdom. It's all those fancy bistro style cafés which are popping up everywhere and persuading innocent young people inside to sample 43 different varieties of coffee and the sort of Continental breakfast we GBB fans throw up our hands in horror at. These establishments are putting the good old 'caff' out of business. However sophisticated it is to perch on a stool and sip a handleless bowl of hot chocolate while munching almond croissant a la Paris, it doesn't set you up for the day like a good old fry up in a steamy caff with aromas of fried bacon wafting you into heaven. Sadly, many youngsters have been put off the pleasures of fry-up heaven, possibly by too many magazine articles and school lectures on healthy eating. I was being a bit pompous the other day when talking about junk food when my granddaughter butted in and said 'you eat junk food'. I assured her I didn't. 'Yes, you do,' she said (they're very lippy at that age and too big to wallop) and went on to list 'cheese, eggs, butter, bacon, red meat and cream'. I was, for once, lost for words. Who is teaching them this stuff? Anyway, back to the subject. I say again, I'm not suggesting we indulge every day, but occasionally is fine. In fact, it can be saved for the holidays, either home-made, or a visit to an all day breakfast place. But it must be done properly. Beware of anyone who lists low fat as a plus on its menu. For a start, sausages – preferably butcher's sausages, preferably pork. None of your fancy added ingredients like garlic, apple, leek or, God forbid, roast pepper and sundried tomato. They're fine for other meals, not for the GBB. Sausages are fried. Put a grilled sausage, all saggy and fatless, in front of a lorry driver in a roadside caff and he'll probably run you over on his way out. Bacon – my preference is for streaky bacon which crisps up nicely. Canadian bacon if I can get it, although there's one brand called Oscar Meir which is Spanish and excellent. Otherwise dry cured, which isn't so salty. If you don't like the fat, buy a good back bacon. Fry until crisp. Grill only if you must, and if you like little curled up bits of shoe leather. Eggs – find someone with their own chickens preferably. Otherwise, free range. I'll not be so irresponsible as to advise ignoring bird flu warnings, but personally I don't care if the hens are sneezing as long as their eggs have lovely orange yolks and very white white. There can be problems with children if you get home-grown eggs. 'There's a black spot in my egg,' said one of my grandchildren. 'That's all right,' I said without thinking, 'it just means its been fertilised.' You can guess the rest. Who wants to have to explain the birds and the bees, or rather just the birds, to an eight year old at breakfast time? 'It's just a speck off the sausages,' we lied. Eggs are fried, preferably sunny side up, as the Americans say, but some people like the yolk broken, although what they dip their bread in, I don't know. Tomatoes – sliced and fried, although Italian tinned tomatoes are fine, at least they have that magic ingredient our commercial tomatoes don't have, taste. I sometimes use green tomatoes instead, sliced, fried and sprinkled with black pepper, a little salt and a pinch of sugar, but I don't suppose our transport caff customers would wear those. Mushrooms – must be real ones, not tinned, which are like little balls of rubber and taste of nothing. Yes, I know they soak up the fat, but if you leave them on a high heat they miraculously spit it out again and go crisp and brown. Some scientific reason for this, but who cares. Black pudding – an absolute must, and it must be proper puddings, not slices, preferably from a butcher. Don't tell children, or the faint hearted, about the blood content. In Cornwall, we have the added pleasure of hogs' pudding and white pudding. Hash browns – absolutely no. They're a foreign import and you should be ashamed of yourself. By all means if you have some leftover cold potatoes, preferably waxy ones, you can fry them until crisp and brown. Note the word fry. No sautéing here, thank you. Fried bread – well, perhaps that is gilding the lily a bit, but if you must, and I usually must, make sure the fat is hot so that the bread is crispy and doesn't soak it up. And finally, baked beans – not entirely necessary but nice. High in protein, too, and improved no end by adding a knob of butter and freshly ground black pepper. Tinned spaghetti is a definite no-no. We don't want Italian-influenced food in our national heritage dish. To serve. Crusty white bread to sop up any juices, toast comes after. A choice of your brown sauce or your tomato sauce, no fancy words like jus here. And tea. Good, strong, builder's tea. I was staying with a friend the other weekend and after I'd been tackling one of the flower borders for a couple of hours she kindly brought me a cup of tea. It was a sort of pale grey in colour, thin and weak, even a self-respecting gnat wouldn't have passed it, and a delicate perfume lingered over it. 'It's Lady Grey,' she said defensively and I had to put her right about the sort of tea you served workers. Hot, terracotta-coloured and strong enough to bend the spoon. Lady Grey can be reserved for genteel afternoon tea. The same for breakfast. Oh yes, we mustn't forget what we cool all this in. Cover your ears again, here comes a four-letter word – lard. To anyone under 21 that's pork fat. It has flavour, it goes with all the breakfast ingredients and it reaches a good temperature and doesn't burn. If you can't bear that, then oil. I don't like the ubiquitous 'vegetable oil', for all I know it's extracted from turnips and cabbage stalks. Identified oil like sunflower and maize is all right but tasteless. I don't like to use rape oil, I understand Americans are so offended by the word that they have changed it to rapa, but I just don't like the smell. Olive oil just isn't right, fine for almost anything else but not breakfast. I use groundnut, which is healthy and has a decent taste. Some caffs will add chips to all the above, but that really is going a bit over the top, although if chips it is then they should be home-cut out of real potatoes and deep fried in dripping. So there it is. As a founder member of 'Keep the GBB Going' I hope it's been a help. As for all you with your low-fat yoghurt and muesli (only the Swiss could make hamster food glamorous) I'm sorry if you never experience the true glory of the only really British dish we have left. Apart from the Cornish pasty, she added hastily.