From Wikipedia this morning.

Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or intoxicants to the point of waste. In the Christian religions, it is considered one of the seven deadly sins–a misplaced desire of food or its withholding from the needy.^[1]
Depending on the culture, it can be seen as either a vice or a sign of status. The relative affluence of the society can affect this view both ways. A wealthy group might take pride in the security of having enough food to eat to show it off, but it could also result in a moral backlash when confronted with the reality of those less fortunate.
Early Church leaders (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony (Okholm 2000), arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods.^[2] He went so far as to prepare a list of five ways to commit gluttony, including:

• Praepropere – eating too soon
• Laute – eating too expensively
• Nimis – eating too much
• Ardenter – eating too eagerly
• Studiose – eating too daintily

and certainly the last of these – Studiose- could not be apllied to the party of reps who sat next to me at breakfast this morning.
One of the benefits of writing a blog is the opportunity to vent one’s frustrations with customer service, faulty equipment – or just life – and then get on with the day.
So before I drive into Salford to have my molar endo dealt with by former client Dr. David Cohen at The Malt House, I’ll just have a quick rant about the scene at breakfast – which could have been an outside broadcast from “The Office”.
Party of reps – clearly on a training course – heaping mounds, mountains, veritable “Everests” of fried food on their plates.
I don’t mean a “big English breakfast” – I mean “it’s the end of the world at 10.00am this morning, so in the absence of sex, drugs or rock and roll, I’m going to see out my life with the BIGGEST plate of eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, beans, tomato, fried bread, toast, butter and marmalade that I can carry back to the table, liberally festooned with tommy sauce and balanced over the gargantuan gut that I have here hanging over my trouser belt.”
Or in the case of the rep ladies – “over my smock top that hides my gut and the black linen trousers that cleverly disguise my continent-sized arse.”
OK – rant over.
Actually – no it isn’t.
Because what people eat is their own business – mind your own business Mr. Barrow.
But I do object to the female flight crew (trolley dollies) from Etihad sitting just a few paces away from me – all looking lovely with their fancy uniforms, faultless make-up and those posey white silk scarves that start somewhere up in their hats and then swoop down across their mysterious sexy Oriental faces and over the shoulder.
They look lovely.
And they stink.
They stink of cigarette smoke as they all sit there, looking “gorgeous” but each contributing to a hovering cloud of blue exhaled CO2 which then wafts its way across the restaurant to impregnate and contaminate the rest of us.
Mind you – it’s strange to have an airline company whose name is an anagram of “I Death”.
Roll on 1st July, when they will all have stand outside in the rain and cold with the reps and scally tourists to smoke their last before flying away.
You wouldn’t think I just quit smoking after a 2-year addiction to tobacco would you?
There is nothing as zealous as a convert they say.
Although I genuinely believe that I have never been a glutton – other than for punishment.
It used to be fat Americans that dominated the world’s hotels – and there are still a fair share of them – one male at yesterday’s breakfast table was having an animated discussion with a colleague about the merits of USA universities. He looked like the comic character in the Monty Python movies who was about to burst if he had a “waffer thin mint”.
But Britain’s hotels are now becoming dominated by Fat Brits.
We have become the 51st state of the USA – not just because Blair sold his soul, our armed forces and his own future job rights to Bush – not just because everywhere is a fast-food retail park – not just because the West Coast coffee culture has replaced the cuppa – but because we have “gone large” and too many eat like pigs.
Thank you for listening.
I’m off to have my root canal done now.