Let them eat cake - but preferably in their own nurseries

Flora must avoid margarine, Oliver only eats organic, Bianca can’t tolerate white bread, and if Daisy has dairy, there’ll be hell to pay – welcome to kids food 2008 style, where Turkey Twizzlers have been consigned to hell and nut allergies rule supreme. But something else has been thrown out along with the Monster Munch of days gone by.

In my day, when it came to eating out in public, saying “please” and “thank you” while Not Picking Nose At Table was of equal, if not more, importance than what we got on the plate. Me, a child raised by wolves who survived on grains picked when the moon was in Aquarius! (okay, hippies on a vegetarian commune – same difference). Today, Tarquin, Harriet and little Ostentatia turn up in Pizza Express with a list of no-go’s, intolerances and food sensitivities longer than the menu itself, accompanied by parents so preoccupied by sugar levels that their bawling, whingeing, bum-picking brats are free to run riot. And if such bad behaviour attracts so much as a tut from the table next door, the whole restaurant is subjected to loud, boorish rants regarding the importance of ‘healthy self-expression’ in children under seven from loud, boorish ranters who are as objectionable as their brood.

What happened to table manners? Why do modern parents think that fellow diners aren’t perturbed by baby’s ear-splitting screams? What makes them think that we’re all interested in the thumping floorshow offered by a very bored, very clumsy Grace? If parents aren’t interested in giving their children a good grounding by treating them like the adults they’ll one day become, then restrain them! Brace them into highchairs! Or do what used to be done in the good old, bad old days: bribe them with Death by Chocolate, and give us all a peaceful meal.