Britain’s favourite meal “somebody else’s dinner”

That. Whatever it is that he’s carrying. No, I don’t know what it is but I want it.

A recent survey has found that Britain’s favourite meal is whatever somebody else is eating. The aroma of somebody else’s food, that you can’t quite place but smells great, beat traditional favourites such as fish and chips, curry, and unspecified meat kebab to the number one spot.

“Can you smell that coming from next door? I can’t tell what it is; it could be oven chips and a pasty from Iceland with precisely zero nutritional value for all I know, but I’m not cooking it and it smells nice. I want it.” said Ian Jenkins,  one of the people surveyed.

Part of the study focused on people’s favourite meal to eat at home, with “that thing the neighbours sometimes cook on a Friday. I don’t know what it is but it smells like it might be a little bit spicy” coming out on top, closely followed by “That. Whatever that smell is. Is it beans? It smells a bit like beans.”

The other part took place in restaurants, where diners were asked what they had ordered and whether they would class that as their favourite meal.

“I was actually really enjoying my steak, and I have absolutely no idea what it was that the waiter carried past towards another table.” explained Janet Atkinson, who was questioned while out for a meal with her husband, “I could even turn out to be horribly allergic to it, but it looked and smelled amazing. It was even sizzling. That’s my favourite meal.”

Since the findings were announced it has emerged that the original result of the latest series of Master Chef had to be overturned because Greg Wallace wanted to award the prize to a contestant who had cooked a second meal that “smelled a bit like potato waffles”, but that he had not even tasted.