This is not a full English due to the following issues or errors:

• Fried eggs are ideal, poached acceptable, and some oddballs like scrambled. Boiled egg is not acceptable. There should be two eggs as standard, more if the breakfast is a ‘large’.
• It’s missing baked beans that have simmered until the sauce thickens into a syrup.
• While cafes love to serve this kind of tomato that’s only because it’s easy to keep a pot of chopped, tinned tomatoes warm. If you’re going tinned, they should be good quality whole plum tomatoes. But well-grilled fresh tomatoes are acceptable. No cherries. No vine attached. Definitely no raw tomato.
• It’s missing the black pudding which elevates a fry-up into the full English.
• Fans of the full English almost all prefer cooked sausages over raw ones.
• The mushrooms look like they came in a tin. Ideally whole field or chestnut mushrooms shoud be used.

There is hearty debate amongst the governing body of the full English about whether or not hash browns are acceptable on a breakfast. Many declare them to be unwanted compared to, for example, bubble and squeak or a tattie scone, or even fried potatoes. They go further and label them ‘trash browns’, ‘American nonsense’, or just ‘shite’. Personally I don’t mind them, and consider them to be an optional addition, but not a core requirement of the full English. There are many other optional additions, not to mention regional specialities which render an Ulster fry very different to a full Welsh or a full Scottish. Hogs pudding, white pudding, fruit pudding, haggis, Lorne sausage, potato farl, soda bread, laverbread, kidneys, etc.

I am available for for keynote speeches on the subject should anyone be organising a full English conference.

A long time ago I was in old Blighty for the first time for work and the locals took care of me foodwise. I remember getting all the usual “English food is terrible” remarks before going and I didn’t know any better so I was worried when I arrived.

Everything was delicious, I loved all of it. The full English especially, that could power you through supper.

You rarely have a full English followed by a heavy lunch. More often a heavy nap.