‘I’m going to call the police’: the big bust up over morning rolls

Dear readers, there's a very good chance you've opened this story with a freshly-baked roll in your hands, filled with crispy bacon and maybe slathered in brown sauce with some spread on the bottom. Mmmmm. That's got me salivating.

But our appetite is actually much larger. We're running a campaign. We want to add 1,000 new paying members to our books by 15 November. If we get there (join today!) we'll complete five pledges to the city, from starting internships for aspiring local journalists to running regular events to producing monthly Good News editions.

We're now more than halfway into our month-long drive and we're a touch behind where we should be. Consider us daunted. But we have faith that you, dear morning-roll-loving Glaswegians, will back us and push us over the line.

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‘I’m going to call the police’: the big bust up over morning rolls

“I’m going to call the police. You are threatening me,” the woman says down the phone furiously. These are not the words I expect to hear from one of Scotland’s most well-respected food campaigners. But perhaps I should have been more prepared.

A deceptively simple assignment about morning rolls has dragged me into the middle of a bitter debate. It’s one that’s seen formal complaints sent to employers, claims of ‘slander’ and counter claims volleyed back and forth, angry blogs and open letters.

How did a campaign for the humble morning roll descend into all-out war? 

We built this city on morning rolls 

“There is, of course, nothing more political than food,” the late Anthony Bourdain once wrote, a pithy phrase that appears tailor-made for this saga. To understand where it all began, we need to go back to 2023.  

As if the people of Glasgow hadn’t endured enough in recent years, in March 2023, news broke that the city’s beloved Mortons — which nationally ships out a million morning rolls a week from its Drumchapel bakery — was going into administration. People were in despair. The outcry went all the way to the Scottish government. In the end, Mortons was saved, after the government and HMRC intervened to nudge on a consortium that rescued the struggling bread purveyors and over a hundred jobs. 

But the episode had a cultural impact: Scotland renewed its vows with the morning roll. The crisis even led the BBC to label it “a national treasure”. They interviewed one man whose passion eclipsed all others, the Paisley-based food researcher, Peter Gilchrist. He argued they were a vital part of the west of Scotland’s culinary and class heritage. “[O]ur morning roll order is part of our working-class story,” he told the BBC. 

Three years later, Gilchrist had kneaded his argument into something more tangible. In May of this year, he launched a campaign to have Scottish morning rolls recognised in UNESCO’s 2027 intake of its inventories of living heritage in the UK. 

Rather than specific foods, the UN body recognises the intangible cultural heritage of traditional culinary practices, such as the craftsmanship and culture of the French baguette, rather than the bread itself. If Gilchrist’s bid was successful, it would mean official recognition for the practice of ordering a morning roll.

Mainstream media got behind the push, ranging from tongue-in-cheek write ups to deadly serious articles in full support. Momentum grew when Scottish Greens MSP, Holly Bruce, lodged a parliamentary motion backing the campaign. She singled out Glasgow Southside, her roll-heavy constituency, namechecking the likes of Cafe Strange Brew and Fulton’s.

Bruce’s intervention tipped the discussion from good-natured to caustic. Dissenting voices began criticising the campaign. “Greens ridiculed over Unesco heritage bid for bread roll,” declared The Times. In The Herald, an internal war began as one opinion columnist deemed the crusade a “non-starter”, illustrative of the “juvenile nature of some of Holyrood’s highly-paid members”, and was then promptly implicitly rebuked by the title’s food and drink writer in a separate article. 

But it was a misquote in The Herald’s sister paper, The National, that curdled general discourse into something intensely personal, pitting one of Scotland’s biggest food figures directly against Peter Gilchrist — and, eventually, me.