It was the autumn of 1987. I had been working in various Indian restaurants around Glasgow to ease my way through the first year of law school. A pal of mine who worked at a wee kebab shop on Gibson Street needed some cover over the weekend. I loved doner kebabs more than I can convey - there was something magically amazing about the coming together of grilled lamb meat, soft pitta bread, salad and garlic and chilli sauce. Besides which, the money was good even if the hours were long. Though, I had never worked in a carry-out before, or experienced the hoards of invariably hammered punters without any of the accoutrements - a table, a fork and so on - that create the façade of civilization of a curry house. I was fine carrying plates and taking orders in a restaurant, but I had no experience of the dark world of the doner kebab shop.

After two eleven hour shifts, up close and personal with the way of the kebab, my love of the doner had dissipated. It was brutal. I could tell you the kebab based horrors my brown eyes witnessed, the appalling disregard for health and safety, not to mention the more than quizzical, questionable nature of the provenance of the meat itself. The next time I would have a doner kebab would be after the passing of a new millennium, over a decade later. For me, PTSD stood for post traumatic stress doner.

Of course, then, at the year 2000 dawned, I had lived in London and had the joy of experiencing the true doner experience, as propogated by the vibrant Turkish community of the city’s eastside. I fell back in love, airbrushing away the horrors of that teenage weekend and welcoming back the onrush of succulent lamb. I was reminded of the words of Gary Barlow from Take That: “I want you back, I want you back, I want you back for good”. I looked forward to a lifetime of luscious love with my kebab. What could possibly come between us a second time? One word: Europe.

Much as I've had my issues around European membership, I was always one for remaining within the project and improving it from within - leaving was the coward’s way out. But I had that thesis profoundly tested last week when I heard that the European parliament was about to vote on whether to ban the doner kebab or not. Bloody foreigners, messing with our British ways.

The issue seems to centre around the use of phosphates. The industrial meat industry uses phosphates as a preservative in frozen meats. (Almost all non high end doner are previously frozen and then thawed and cooked on site). It is thought that there is evidence that the phosphates cause increased rates of cardiovascular disease. Moreover in 2015 the World Health Organisation for the first time also declared that processed meats increased the risk of cancer.

So it was brought to the vote. MEPs needed an absolute majority of 376 to ban phosphates from food, but just 373 voted in favour, against 272, with 30 abstentions. Three votes. The doner kebab was saved by just three votes. Though, one does wonder what would cause an MEP to abstain in such circumstances. The vote was divided along right/left lines. The tree-hugging, vegan-loving, non-leather-wearing, lentil-obsessed Greens and Socialists had argued in favour of the ban on the basis of health concerns over the additive.

“This is a sad day for consumer rights, which have been trampled on,” Belgian Green MEP Bart Staes said following the vote. But then again, he’s Belgian.

Whereas the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) which did not back the objection motion tweeted: “We saved your kebab. You're welcome”. German EPP MEP Dr Renate Sommer previously claimed that the ban would lead to “the cessation of kebab production” in the EU. If you think we love a kebab here, you want to go to Germany.

Health and welfare are important. I have been a passionate advocate for the licensing of fast food outlets in the same way we licence alcohol - bad food harms a society as much, if not more, than excessive alcohol. But in their attempts to keep us living longer, healthier lives they seem to forget one thing. What’s the point of giving me an extra ten years on the planet if it is a ten years without all those things that bring me joy? And at the top of that list is most definitely a doner kebab.