WHAT next? A smashed avocado yum-yum, cried the internet?

Greggs has kicked 2019 off to a brilliant start by trolling the vast swathes of the United Kingdom who take umbrage at the notion people might want to be healthier, help the environment and be kind to animals.

Vile lot, the five per cent of residents who are vegan and here's national treasure Greggs playing right into their hands.

Due to the mainstream's bizarre relationship with vegans, our anointed steak bake purveyor will have known the instant outrage the introduction of a vegan sausage roll would cause.

Piers Morgan was predictably infuriated and expressed his ire on Twitter, such is the modern way.

"Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage," the Chief Harrumpher harrumphed, "You PC-ravaged clowns."

Whoever is employed to run the Greggs Twitter account was having the time of their life on Wednesday, sassing Mr Morgan, winding up pastry purists and generally striding their way into 2019, pants over their trousers and wearing a rough puff cloak.

"Isn’t it time you changed your name to something more gender-fluid & less toxically masculine?," Morgan droned on, taking a cannibalistic bite of a gammon roll.

Don't tell him the meringues are made with aquafaba or Lord knows what he'll do.

You can understand Great Britain's great outrage. A sausage roll without the sausage? Why, that's nearly as bad as a ferry company without any ships.

Our lords and masters have engaged a "start-up" company to lay on extra ferries and ease congestion at Dover in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Unfortunately the ferry firm awarded this £13.8m contract has no ferries.

Boaty McWithoutABoatFace.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling defended the decision, saying the government is supporting new British businesses and isn't that what Brexit means? There's some sort of analogy there, something about staring down an empty hollow of pastry.

It's always fascinating, the issues that work folk into a lather. Who knew the replacement of sausage with fermented fungus would be one of them, rather than the avant garde apportioning of public funds.

Perhaps for Christmas the nation has been granted the wisdom to know the difference between the things it can and cannot change. For 2019 we'll sweat the small stuff.

Or perhaps the Greggs vegan sausage roll is a useful hate figure to unite us as a nation? Except in Dundee, where the item is not yet available. Hasn't Greggs heard of the cultural revolution taking over Scotland's fourth largest city. What an unacceptable snub.

There are accusations that Seaborne Freight copied its terms and conditions wholesale from a takeaway food firm, with wording including: "Please provide additional delivery instructions in the relevant section on our checkout page."

Perhaps the shipping company and the bakers can unite with vegan sausage rolls delivered by boat along the River Tay.

While Christmas officially finishes on Sunday with the arrival of Twelfth Night, resolve to be clean-living, upstanding members of society begins on January 1. This year record numbers have signed up for Veganuary, an event requiring pledgers to go vegan for one month. It now comes with the caveat that eating sausage rolls three times a day for 31 days defeats the purpose.

Others - or perhaps the same fine people - will also take part in Dry January, eschewing booze for the month.

There are two camps on this issue: those left feeling that the festive period has left them nine tenths lard and one tenth sherry with a desperate urge to recalibrate, and those who feel there's no point being abstemious in January when there are leftovers to clear and bleak weather to comfort themselves through.

The first has a bad rep as being smug, the second is scornful of the first. Neither stance is particularly compatible with goodwill to all men but it is indicative of our nation's uncomfortable and seemingly unshiftable relationship with our own health.

There is a blind and socially acceptable hatred for vegans because we can't stand feeling judged. Even quiet vegans, those who don't picket restaurants or hover in balaclavas with placards on the high street, are scorned.

Their mere existence is a comment on our bacon guzzling, planet destroying ways. Vegetarians are alright, they still eat cheese. This is why the vegetarian McDonald's Happy Meal was received with barely a blink; you don't feel undermined by a vegetarian, they have their flaws.

Vegans are walking embodiments of virtue, silently chiding us for all our flaws.

Of course, the impression is a crude one. There are strong arguments that grazing cattle are much more beneficial to the environment than industrially grown maize, grains and soya, as one example.

Veganism is rapidly entering the mainstream, however. Greater numbers of people are embracing the lifestyle and what could be a clearer totem of this than Greggs clambering aboard, if you'll allow the extension of the metaphor.

After Brexit, comes the warning, butter will become an occasional luxury and, with government appointed boat-free shipping companies, it looks like we'll be lining up to beg for vegan sausage rolls.

So let's not be too hasty about this pastry just yet, eh?