The Wit's Guide to Breakfast
Or, the least important meal
When the Great Wit is called to breakfast, the Great Wit pulls the covers over their head and waits for lunch. Because when it comes to your daily recommended allowance of sparkling conversation, it’s the least important meal of the day.
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
— Oscar Wilde
Ever since Victorian times, when the Anglo-American breakfast evolved from a heavy, meaty excuse to skip lunch to a carbs-and-jam jumpstart, the wit has been looking for a way out of the bleary-eyed meal.
Consider the Curate’s Egg, a Britishism used to describe a generally horrible thing with a scant few positive characteristics. It originated in a cartoon featuring a lowly curate at the breakfast table of his boss, the bishop.
“I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg,” the bishop says.
“Oh no, my lord!,” replies his overly polite guest, “I assure you parts of it are excellent!”
The conclusions are obvious: James Corden’s recent omlet-based unpleasantness was the rare Reverse Curate’s Egg, and the morning meal is bad for banter. No one wants to be had for breakfast.
“My wife and I tried two or three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.”
— Winston Churchill
There are two classic solutions to the breakfast problem, but the first will kill you and the second is dead.
Start with the poison: Highballs for breakfast. This is the title of a sprightly 2017 collection of P.G. Wodehouse excerpts on the subject of alcohol, and derives from a 1915 comic essay in which he describes how he kicked a sugar habit by letting it ferment. To deploy a famous Bertie Wooster line:
“I hadn’t the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”
The Kentucky Breakfast, according to local legend, consists of bourbon, a steak, and a dog and is prepared by feeding the steak to the dog while sipping the bourbon. Which probably aligns with dipsomaniac W.C. Fields’ stringent credo to “never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.”
Lest this start to seem like madcap fun, consider the CAGE questionnaire for substance abuse, which asks if you think you need to Cut down, if you’re Annoyed by people’s comments, if you feel Guilty, and — the real outlier — if you need an “Eyeopener” to steady your nerves. The correct answer, despite this breakfast martini served with marmalade toast, is no.
“Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.”
— Fran Lebowitz
The much healthier wit’s answer to the rooster’s call was the morning paper. I can vividly recall newspaper meetings at which we’d assign different sections of the paper to different family members, as though we offered home delivery to 1950s sitcoms. Etiquette guides state that breakfast is the only meal at which it is acceptable to read, a stroke of marketing genius for Big Journalism and a blissful reprieve for the still somnolent. No need to chit chat; hand me the comics and leave the phrase turning to the professionals. Sadly, the remaining papers are shriveled husks and the devices that replaced them don’t quite do the trick.
“In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.”
— Anthony Trollope
Lest it seem all the wits are in a league for the suppression of eggs, let it be said that Wodehouse was a terrific chronicler of the solid breakfast. Specifically, the Full English, the b. and eggs, or bacon and e. But it’s always as a precursor to wit, the original corpse reviver. As Bertie rhapsodizes in Jeeves and The Unbidden Guest:
“It’s only after a bit of breakfast that I’m able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I’m never much of a lad till I’ve engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.”
Quote Vote
“Some folks are wise, and some are otherwise.”
— Tobias Smollett
After breakfast, wisdom seems like an attainable goal. But in which niche? We’ve covered snobs, dilettantes, and heartbreak, all chosen by you in these weekly polls; where to next on the good ship GWQ?
Speaking of…
Newspapers
Alcoholics
The 173nd issue of Get Wit Quick engulfed its eggs sunnyside down. Jordan Peele summons the appropriate amount of enthusiasm for the free continental breakfast: “Like Go-Gurt, but to stay.” Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting should have been published on the back of cereal boxes. Remember when they told us Cracklin’ Oat Bran was good for your ❤️ ?
My favourite quote regarding breakfast, comes from Inspector Morse. After a very jovial "Good Morning!" from his new assistant, Morse stares at him and says " You're one of those people who eat breakfast, aren't you?"