One Skinny Latte. And a Pie.

Greggs has gone all... up-market. Yes, that Greggs. Greggs the Bakers Greggs. Greggs "Patrick McGuinness Does Our Ads and We Think That Adds a Touch of Class" Greggs. Greggs "If You Scrunch Up A Slice of Our White Bread it Turns Back to Paste" Greggs.

You get the picture.

But now Greggs on the Strand has redecorated. A shop that in the past would not have looked out of place in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre (I believe they have two there, in fact) reopened with a shiny new sign designed to look like overly-varnished wood, and a sort of 1970s-style breakfast bar along one wall at which you can perch precariously on a trendy chrome bar stool as you eat your Steak Bake and flick through one of the women's magazines that has inexplicably appeared there. Doughnuts and other such produce which used to sit tantalisingly under a see-through plastic counter for generations of kids to gaze at and implore "Pleeeease, Mum? Pleeeease?" are now proudly displayed in huge wicker baskets - the sort of thing that would attract the term "rustic" were this Hamstead or Kew Green, and that, conversely, attract flies and a touch-before-you-buy attitude from the Strand's fastidious clientele. You then go to the counter and are asked if it's "eat in or takeaway". Eat in?! Are you kidding? What would possess you to want to eat in a Greggs? Even Patrick McGuinness doesn't eat in Greggs, he takes his pasty away and eats it in the privacy of his own car while it pisses it down outside. Eat in?

It seems that to an extent this sophisticated exterior masks the same old Greggs, though. You can still get a Meal Deal, and a Meal Deal still includes a Grab Bag bag of crisps so big that even Gary Linekar might save some of it for later, and you still get a reassuring choice of Coke, Sprite or Fanta when it comes to the drink "option". But even the food itself is edging into suspiciously high-class territory. For a start, they seem to be catering for the health-conscious, and frankly, my health is not something that's generally in the forefront of my mind when I go into a Greggs. I've never stood in a Greggs and thought, "Oh, I'm glad to see the the chicken salad sandwich is now on wholemeal bread and contains low-fat mayonnaise", but rather something along the lines of "I really fancy a pie". But, in case you're interested, low-fat mayonnaise is now on the menu along with other new products which include "cupcakes" (SMALL cakes, to you and I) Steak and Mushroom Lattice (steak and mushrooms in fancy pastry, aka a Crap Pie) and Maple and Pecan Swirl (which sounds altogether too American for me to even investigate further).

And that's all very nice and admirable, but there's a Pret a Manger two doors down from this particular Greggs, and if I want an overpriced bit of fancy pastry in a paper bag I'll go there (they do "swirls" too - they have cinnamon in them and I'm ashamed to admit they're rather good...) But I don't want that from Greggs. I want instant sugar-based gratification from the likes of Jammy Biscuits, which are exactly what they say they are: bisciuits with jam in them, or a bun with its fake icing and underwhelming yet nostalgic glace cherry on top. I want slathers of full fat mayonnaise on my shiny white bread and the comforting assurance that a coronary could be just around the corner. I'm not really into Grab Bags or Fanta, but I appreciate the thought and would be sad to see them go.

So true to these sentiments, I went for a breakfast meal deal (being as I was in urgent need of sustenance on a Friday morning, having yet again fallen foul of the mistaken belief that Thursday night is the new Friday) in the form of two rashers of bacon in a big white roll, and a strong coffee.

"What kind of coffee would you like?"

They have different KINDS of coffee in Greggs? Don't mess with my hangover this early in the morning!

"Um...."

"Cappucino, Latte, Skinny Latte, or filter."

I didn't ask what was in a Greggs skinny latte. One sugar instead of three, perhaps? Semi-skimmed instead of full-fat milk? I'm assuming it isn't soya milk, but who knows these days? I chose the take away option and multi-tasked by walking down the Strand whilst eating and listening to Blur (God bless ipod shuffle) and got bacon fat on my blouse in the process.

There are no less than 7 branches of Greggs in Bradford; there are 5 in Blackburn; there's even one in the Arse End of Nowhere that is Nelson; you can look these sort of scintillating statistics up on their website, and I'm sad to say that I did. There are also 2 just on Lower Marsh Street in SE1, though I've never worked out why. Greggs, which Stuart Maconie singled out as a shining example of Northern greatness, is putting down roots in the South faster than you can say "Accrington Stanley? Who are they?" but in doing so it's changing.

Or, as one of my friends incisively put it "Gentrification: the final frontier".