When I was on the road as a hack the word doorstep was a verb as well as a noun, and thus many hours were spent in the wind and rain, waiting (usually in vain) for the person of the moment to emerge and give the assembled media a few pearls of wisdom.
Greasy spoons were an essential part of life back then - and were always preferred by hacks and monkeys (photographers) to the sanitised charms of Mucky-Ds and other chains. We'd delegate some poor agency hack to stay on the doorstep and decamp to the nearest greasy spoon to mull over the papers, eat and drink huge amounts of unhealthy food and bitch with each other; bringing back a cold cuppa and a bacon sarnie for whichever poor sap had been filling in for us on the doorstep.
At one stage I could navigate around London by the greasy spoons - there were many of them in a stone's throw of Fleet Street and all over the grottier parts of town, and the usual way to find a new one was to ask a cabbie (the old green cab shelters, of where there are still a few, serve the most fantastic bacon sandwiches and pint mugs of NATO-standard tea, but you have to be a cabbie, or plausible enough, to use 'em). Even in the recesses of Kensington and Chelsea you'd find one - usually run by Italians working ferocious hours and spending their day in a miasma of steam, grease and fag-smoke.
The other joy of working in Fleet Street were the Smithfield market pubs which, through some archaic licensing quirk, were allowed to open before dawn to give the bumarees (the porters) their breakfast.
Many's the time I staggered into the Fox and Grapes at 5.30am for a mixed grill and a pint of Guinness to dislodge the hangover before starting the early shift - this when the top bar of the Harrow had finally called last orders at 4am, leaving just enough time for a shit,shower and shave before the self-abuse could begin again in earnest. Jesus, no wonder so many of us ended up divorced alcoholics with heart disease!
The other great institutions were the transport caffs, where lorry drivers would stop to stock up on their cholesterol. My kids to this day would rather find a proper trucker's caff than any Little Chef or Happy Eater any day.
One place that stands out above all others isn't in the UK at all. The Manhattan Cafe was a wonderful place just around the corner from that evil drag that is Leeson Street in Dublin. You could get a full Irish breakfast - bacon, egg, black and white puddings, bubble and squeak, fried slice and unlimited tea - at four in the morning after a night of misbehaviour, and you wouldn't need to let anything else solid pass your lips for the rest of the day.
And to think that, in these healthier times, the average day starts with nothing more lethal than a cup of tea. Ah well, blissful memories!