CHEAP FOOD I LOVE: The Gregg’s Sausage Roll

I was first introduced to the Gregg’s sausage roll while living on Record Exchange wages in Wood Green. The deal was 4 of them for 99p, which would keep me going for most of a Saturday. Nowadays it’s 2 for ‘1.10 or 60p each but the product itself seems not to have changed. There’s no way I could stomach 4 at once now, but a single specimen is an unhealthy snackist’s dream. Gregg’s rolls are the very quintessence of sausage-based wrongness: warm, greasy, crunchy pastry, and meat which is pink and worryingly juicy with just a touch of spice. The meat crumbles and dissolves in your mouth, leaving you with a gobful of unsubtle, comforting flavour. As with most low-rent food, thinking about where the meat comes from and what it will be doing to you is liable to lead to shudders of guilt and horror but as an amoral treat now and then the Gregg’s roll is scarily addictive.

(No.1 in an occasional series – also watch for the companion piece Great Ready Meals I Have Known coming soon!)