The credit squeeze has distracted attention from a far more insidious threat to our island way of life: a looming shortage of curry. Curry houses, institutions as quintessentially British as pyjamas, bungalows and polo, are drifting into decline. Politics, commodity prices and demographic change are threatening our patrimony of over 10,000 chicken tikka palaces. But there is still time to soften the blow, if not avert it.

Spicy food from the subcontinent has been inducing cathartic perspiration and satiety in the British masses since the 1960s. In common with corner shops, curry restaurants provided a commercial and cultural interface between newly arrived south Asian immigrants and the host population. Britons, tiring of such austerity fare as bully beef and dried egg, were ready for a gastronomic adventure. The local Taj Mahal, with its twangy sitar music and flock wallpaper, gave it to them.