‘Expert’ claims to have settled the lunch, dinner, tea debate once and for all

If there’s one debate that’s guaranteed to get even the most placid Northerner going, it’s what to call the three main meals.

Now, obviously it’s breakfast, dinner and tea, but if you accidentally travel too far south the confusion begins, as they call the evening meal dinner – don’t arrange a dinner date in London or you’ll end up sat by yourself at midday wondering why you’ve been stood up.

Well, apparently the debate has been settled once and for all, by a so called ‘expert’ who clearly doesn’t have a clue.

Chris Bloom / Flickr

Etiquette expert William Hanson has claimed that dinner is lunch (or fucking luncheon), while tea is in fact dinner – nonsense.

He said: “The correct order of meals is breakfast, lunch or luncheon as it is technically called, and then dinner.”

According to Will the Expert, tea comes between the midday and evening meals, and is a spread of afternoon tea with things like finger sandwiches and scones. Jesus wept.

He went on to add that any food after the evening meal is supper, saying: “Then came supper historically and that was a light snack before you went to bed, maybe after the opera or theatre.”

A light snack after the opera? What about a massive sloppy kebab after you’ve stumbled out of the pub? Can we have a kebab for supper, Will?

So basically, Will is wrong, and the fact remains that the meals are breakfast, dinner and tea, as proven by school dinners, Christmas dinner and common sense.