Middle Class Problems: Dinner at 5:20pm? NHS hospitals have got meal times all wrong...

(Justin Paget/Corbis)

As an inpatient of two NHS hospitals recently, I came to the realisation that there is a systemic crisis affecting hospital meals.

You might think it's the food quality. And I can tell you that at one hospital, ladling a bowl of watery, flavourless soup into my gob, followed by an insipid serving of "sweet -and-sour chicken" (without the sweet and sour), it was enough to make me want to switch to tube feeding.

But the issue is actually far more fundamental: meal times. As anyone of the tribe should know, lunch should be served between 1pm and 2:30pm; dinner after 7:30pm. Well, it should be in my book. So my enthusiasm at receiving three square meals a day direct to my bed was swiftly tempered by outrage: lunch just before midday? Dinner at 5:20pm? That amounts to tea! "It's middle-class discrimination!" I bawled at the catering staff. OK, what I actually said was, "I'm terribly sorry, I don't suppose there's a way of getting my dinner any later?" "No" came the curt response.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if, like every gastrofied pub in the land, hospitals spruced the menu language up a little: "sausage and mash" sounds just too spartan to titillate the taste buds. Which is why, one night, I made a break for it: shedding my hospital gown and disconnecting my drip, I slipped on some civvies and staggered out to my nearest classy joint. Starters: parsnip and honey soup with rye bread and butter. Main: free-range Cherry Orchard sausages, beer-mustard mash and red-wine gravy. All served piping-hot, at a respectable time. Now that's more like it.