If you are unfortunate enough to be tramping the cracked pavements of Newcastle-Under-Lyme having recently had heart surgery then this might be the café for you. There is nothing in here to wake you from your post-operatic torpor. The menu is limited to a few snacks and sandwiches. There are a couple of dull pictures and mirrors on the wall and the odd randomly placed coffee sack.  It’s a fine place for the colour-blind though, the decor of greys, whites and browns which left me wondering if the colour palette is taken from a clothes of a local male pensioner.

That was certainly the demographic in here, I was the young gun, the infiltrator that they would have surely disapproved of if they have looked up from there half-buttered scones.

I order only a cup of Earl Grey, thinking if the staff can’t be bothered then why should I? The guy behind the counter, looking to have semi-retired (on the evidence of his inactivity) looked as thrilled as the punters. One of the toasties that was eventually brought looked fit for human consumption but then how hard is it to shove a bit of bread in a Breville?

The chairs were all drab and painful to sit in for more than ten minutes but the only colour in the entire gaff came from a number of red uncomfortable looking leather seats. Interesting that in a place as yawn-some and incommodious as this one, the customers chose to remain on the rickety chairs.

The window seat was the only ‘prime’ seat affording a view of the passing drunkards and smackheads of the town but this was occupied by a old man so grey he made John Major look like a rainbow. He sat and solemnly stirred his grey tea in a brown cup.

If there was a prize for the dullest café in Britain, I’m not sure this would win but it would certainly be a quarter-finalist. The only excitement was a discarded mitten on one of the tables. Glove, see no colour.

Verdict: 2/5.

Good: Somewhere you get your head down.

Bad: If Horlicks was a café…