Anyone who, after a couple of well deserved post-match snifters, has succumbed to the delights of a kebab must find it hard to believe that they are the scourge of the England side.

How can what is little more than a hot lamb salad sandwich - I appreciate manufacturers may be a little sheepish about the exact ingredients - be bad for you?

Surely Glenn Hoddle's puritanical dismissal of Gazza just for kicking back a late night greasy feast is the latest example of psychokebabble from the England supremo.

Certainly the staff of Ali's Kitchen, Walmgate's finest fast food emporium, seem to think so.

"Would Gazza have been kicked out of the England team if he was eating one of our kebabs? Certainly not!" says co-partner Angie Kose - who quietly admits to being a vegetarian.

"The staff who work here eat a kebab every day and they'll be fighting fit for the World Cup.

"They'll need to be, we're going to be run off our feet."

And could Gazza have skewered the opposition on a kebab-only diet?

"I'm not entirely sure about that. But if he had extra chilli sauce he'd run like the clappers," she added.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.