Just Jamie There's a lot at 'steak'

Apparently it has been going on a while but, with the time and distance between us, I was completely blinded to it. He has turned vegetarian!

In this liberal age of "animal rights" this and "meat is murder" that, the dreaded one is just another pebble on an ever growing vegetarian mountain and his conversion will come as no great shock to most. And to meet him for the first time, with his dreadlocked hair (hence his monicker), and almost bohemian-like existence, one would automatically assume he is that way.

But I for one almost dropped my bacon butty!

I've known him since we were kids. We were christened together, lived doors away from each other in Sunny Rochdale, and grew up together. If he had turned around then and announced "in 10 years' time I will be a veggie" I would have laughed in his face. And he would probably have started laughing too. Vegetarianism indeed. The very thought.

This is the man who once drove around for hours to take advantage of a "buy one Big Mac get one free" promotion. It seemed most of Rochdale was bitten by the same bug and all of its McDonalds swiftly sold out. Like excitable youngsters searching for Willy Wonka's golden ticket, we visited every outlet within a 25-mile radius. We eventually found salvation beneath the golden arches in Failsworth and, boy, was it worth it.

And another time we attempted a "Top Shelfer", where you munch through as much as the menu your wallet/heart will allow. Only "quality" items counted - your Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, McChicken etc and the pair of us achieved personal bests which may never be bettered.

The only time he visits McDonalds now is to hold aloft banners and jeer at those going in.

As growing adults, meat was at the very centre of our diet - for me it still is - and I cannot imagine going without. The v-word was something that was not uttered among our peers. We would have a few pints, talk about the football and, if you were lucky, go home to the unmistakeable aroma of a thick piece of steak being positively incinerated. (Mother Dearest has an inherent wariness of any meats and insists on cooking any "badness" out of them. Unfortunately this usually results on her cooking the taste out of it as well. A good steak should be seared on both sides and still bloody in the middle)

Discovering your pal is a vegetarian is like walking into a room to catch him with his mother's dress on. Even Fred did not mean to tell me that he was no longer of the meat-eating variety, almost ashamed to admit he was now one of them.

Unbeknown to me he gave up eating meat about six months ago, after he hooked up with his Israeli girlfriend while on his latest bout of travels. I have seen him a few times since then, yet he never gave so much as a hint. Not a sausage - although I suppose he wouldn't have done, would he?

With the benefit of hindsight, I suppose things were amiss when he turned down my offer of a bacon sandwich after a night on the tiles, but I put that down to being delicate. And, looking back, it was glaringly obvious that things were not right when he politely abstained from a trip to my favourite fast-food restaurant (and once his) for a top-shelfer. I thought he might be ill and even voiced concerns to the Long Suffering Marjorie.

Now his secret is out, he has been extolling the virtues of going veggie. He said he has never felt better, and has lost weight. He has just come back from Israel to spend time with his girlfriend, and said he is tanned, and sounded healthy and happy. But as he was talking to me, I kept getting this image of a pasty individual (as all veggies are) wasting away to nothing, with barely the strength to lift the phone.

He has invited me down to Cambridge - where he now studies - to join his motley crew in a boycott outside McDonalds. I said I might just go as well - it's about time I beat my personal best.