Pete Robinson: Make mine an organic fry-up

On the surface the 'organic' faux-bacon and sausages may sound tempting but, other than it's probably about as truly organic as the contents of my lavatory, such seductive appetisers are only suggested to mask a sad reality. You will mainly be eating over-priced muesli and porridge oats. Accompanied by unlimited 'free' organic green tea. All you can wee.

I do realise that there are pubs and there are pubs. No doubt this sort of thing should go down very well with the professional clientele in the appropriate city centre venue. Those mock-continental brasseries where they tend to serve more coffee than beer. But to my mind such sterile establishments aren't really 'pubs'.

Let's be honest. Real pubs have never been somewhere you go for your health. Traditionally they have always been slightly naughty, adults-only hostelries where a little unhealthy excess is both permitted and encouraged within reason, overseen by a responsible landlord. A warm haven from life's tepid drudgery where you're welcome to get a little woozy, have a good laugh among friends and voice non-PC opinions with little risk of objection. When food is offered it's traditional wholesome fare, well baked and generously fried, with the healthiest option being a Ploughman's.

That same, blissfully unique formula has survived virtually unchanged for centuries and remains as popular with the masses as it ever was. That's why we go to pubs, and why we are happy to pay five times Tesco's price for what is effectively the same booze. It's that certain, unhealthy 'something' which has made our Great British Pubs the envy of the world. And, as the wise saying goes, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.

Yet today it's getting depressingly close to the stage where the only 'real' English or Irish pubs we can still enjoy are discovered on holidays abroad. At least there you can get an all-day full-English fried breakfast with sumptuous fatty bacon and plenty of fried bread to mop up your runny eggs. Black pudding too if you're lucky. Accompanied, of course, by an obligatory pint to drown the previous night's hang-over. Mmm... heaven on the costas.

Those British 'pub exports' are never empty because they eagerly delight customers with what they really want, in all it's unhealthy glory. Not whatever the government, ASH or MORI say would make the hoo-hars 'intend' to visit.

Here at home in our cloned, soulless, block-paved town centres most pubs have become forlorn food halls, cheerless coffee houses and woeful wine bars. Catering for the current breed of laptop-toting office workers during the day followed by the shot-swigging, street-vomiting yob culture from evening 'til dawn's early light.

Out of town many licensees, fearing the writing is on the wall, are succumbing to the fantasy that there is a wealth of 'new' customers waiting to beat a bath to their bars provided all the tables are littered with place mats, cutlery and healthy-happy-menus for the kids.

Clinical steam cleaning and redecoration have surgically eradicated any prior suggestion of 'atmosphere' whilst ensuring the remaining drinkers can be identified by their individual flatulence. Smoking lepers are banished to a semi-open cattle shed out back or, where no outdoor space is available, discouraged altogether. That it should come to this.

Organic beers I can understand, brewed to a traditional flavour, lovely. I'm prepared to tolerate marginally healthier food, even to the point of McCain's high-fibre oven chips.

But now we're told we must evolve towards organic breakfasts. In pubs? I'm not sure my body-mass-index could stand the shock. Make mine a fry-up and a pint. Preferably with a fag for dessert.