RESTAURANT critic Giles Coren has blasted Oxford's Randolph Hotel after being served a questionable English breakfast.

The columnist claimed he could not help but laugh when staff at the Beaumont Street hotel dished out the 'revolting' meal during his trip to the city last week.

He claimed the £21.50 dish was 'unfit for consumption in all but the grisliest prisons', rating both the hotel's breakfast and service zero.

But he did give the hotel a ten out of ten for its location.

In a review in The Times, Mr Coren said: "This, truly, was the worst thing I have ever been served in any establishment of any kind ever, anywhere in the world.

"My breakfast made me laugh. But then it made me sad. And then it made me very angry indeed. And finally it made me feel ashamed. Of my country and of my national cuisine.

"What they served me for breakfast at the Randolph Hotel was at best scandalous and at worst a fully illustrated announcement of the Death of the English Breakfast."

Mr Coren was in the city, filming for a new show for Sky Arts at the Ashmolean Museum.

Before slating the service of waiters, he described he shock at his offer of a 'very pale' fried egg, 'very dry' rasher of bacon, partly burnt sausage, 'machine-grated' potato hash brown, unripe tomato and seven of the 'most appaling' mushrooms he had seen.

He went on to say: "I would hazard a guess that those dire, base-level ingredients might have cost the Randolph, at most, 50p to buy. So that’s a mark-up well in excess of 4,000 per cent!

"How can they do that? How can they welcome the people of the world to a beautiful building in one of our greatest cities, set up such a level of expectation and then serve them a breakfast (still regarded by most of the world as the only meal in Britain you can trust) that would surely be deemed unfit for consumption in all but the grisliest prisons."