Maybe the Prime Minister’s approach to eating a pasty has merit? - Yorkshire Post Letters

I enjoyed reading your defence of our Prime Minister and his pasty-eating technique on social media. How our politicians consume their foodstuffs is an unwelcome recent trend in our country’s political discourse (see Ed Miliband tackling a bacon sarnie, and the carnage that ensued).

The point you raise though, is an important one. Having grown up in the Duchy, and lived in Yorkshire for nearly as long, I feel somewhat qualified to comment. I am, as you might expect, firmly on the side of the one-handed pasty approach. This leaves you free to do all manner of things with the other – write, drive a tractor, point people in the right direction, wave off seagulls, etc.

However, I clearly remember taking my driving test on the streets of Camborne in 2001. The biggest hazard wasn’t children playing in the road, or errant dogs running into the street. It was the freshly baked batch that had just come out of the oven at Oggy Pasties, and the literally dozens of local residents wandering around the street with pasties in front of their faces. I’d be interested to see the HSE statistics…

Another memorable incident occurred when I was working behind the bar in the Turks Head pub on my home island of St. Agnes in the Isles of Scilly. Daily, tourist boats would make the short journey across to St. Agnes, and one particular day I distinctly remember the passenger boat, loaded with tourists, struck the only obstacle on that straight of water, a rather large navigation buoy.

When the vessel eventually docked, the culprit was revealed. The skipper had failed to see the obstruction, due to having his face tucked into a particularly large pasty.

On reflection, perhaps the dainty pasty-nibbling from the middle, adopted by yourself and our prime-minister has its merits.