GEORGE HAYTER: The pasty’s progress (From Hampshire Chronicle)

GEORGE HAYTER: The pasty’s progress

3:26pm Wednesday 16th May 2007 in News

MY antennae have been picking up diced potato, chopped onion and baked pastry, which could herald an emerging trend in the High Street.

It's early days, but it may be the start of a boom in the popularity of a traditional snack with links to Cornwall.

This first hint comes in the form of a couple of shops right next door to one another. As well as these outlets, which sell almost nothing but pasties, there are at least two other shops offering the semi-circular pies.

If the trend goes on, then, by my reckoning, our high street shops will be completely taken over by pasties by about the year 2050.

But history makes that unlikely: previous invasions have had us nervous that our shops were being monopolised by building societies, estate agents, charity shops and mobile phone abated before coming anywhere near a rout.

Why is the pasty thriving? Is it because the good folk of Winchester, once dubbed "the poshest town in England", are turning their noses up at the hamburgers and hot dogs that go down a storm in many towns?

Or is the dawning invasion part of a wider change, with our town centres catering less for shopping and more for eating and drinking? That is said to be part of shopping's move to out-of-town malls, and the internet.

Perhaps the rise of the pasty is more to do with eating habits, with fewer families gathering round the dinner table and more of us eating individually and on the hoof?

So is the ancient pasty making a comeback because it's ideally suited to modern life?