Leading article: Freedom for the fries

Having fully supported Jamie Oliver and his campaign to improve the school dinner, it is with great sadness that we must now sound a note of caution, doubt even. Not with the campaign itself. Who could doubt the efficacy of something that would have our little darlings tucking into green vegetables and fresh fruit in place of buns and fizzy drinks.

No, the hesitations concern the campaign's effect on the humble chip, whose sales are falling thanks to the calumny that would tag the chip with the image of fat and self-indulgence rather than the culinary glory that it is.

Ask a Frenchman how he could manage a steak without pommes frites, a Belgian how he could eat moules without them, or an Englishman how he could tuck into cod fillets without that glorious mound of golden sticks dampening the newspaper and demanding the tomato sauce. "Chips with everything," says Arnold Wesker. And so do we.