Ah, Sunday dinner! In Canada, that's always cooked and eaten at home, with compulsory attendance by the entire kin-group. I was taken flat aback by the meat-and-two-veg menu served at midday on Sunday at the first Wetherspoon establishment I ever visited, in Woolwich in 2015.

The sliced beef with green peas, potato and Yorkshire pud, all slathered over with brown gravy, looked quite like my grandmother's -- but it sure as shootin' didn't taste like my grandmother's. The beef was solid under the knife and grey in colour, and the peas had a rather alarming Day-Glo look about them. The Yorkshire was rubbery and tough ("elephant's leather" as Stanley Holloway put it), and the gravy had an unforgettable chemical tang. I believe there were also potatoes and carrots on the plate, but after the Yorkshire I just didn't have the heart.

The real objective of the meal for many people -- after getting the belly well lined against a full afternoon of solid drinking -- was obviously dessert. Never have I seen such basins of sticky toffee pudding, which I presume came from a mix confected by the same chemical genius who was responsible for the gravy.

The coffee was okay, though.