Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese

At school we used to play a bizarre game.

St Mary’s C of E in Welton, Lincolnshire, was an ordinary, medium-sized, rural primary school. For the most part, the playground games were equally ordinary and universal: classics like tag (though we called it tiggy) and British Bulldogs, plus of course football. These could all be played on the concrete play area that we had access to for most of the year. The school had a much larger grass playing field, but this was usually out of bounds due to the soggy ground that was the inevitable result of the British weather.

However, during the few weeks of early summer, when it was sunny and dry, but we hadn’t yet broken up for the holidays, other possibilities were opened up.

First, we had to seek permission to “go on the grass”. A child would be nominated by their peers to go and ask the supervising teacher, who would then walk to the edge of the concrete play area adjacent to the grass. Meanwhile, the children would all line up along that sacred boundary and poise themselves in anticipation. The teacher would reach down and touch the ground, feeling for moisture and assessing the situation. Then they would loudly announce their decision: yes or no. If it was a no, we would all trudge dejectedly back to our humdrum, concrete-based games. But if it was a yes… the whole school would sprint out onto the grass, screaming with delight. Some would race to see who could reach the far side of the field first. Others would run immediately to secure a preferred area to play. Once the field had thus been ritually claimed, we would decide which game we were going to play. And more often than not, it was Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese.

Occasionally, years later, I’ve remembered this game, and marveled at just how odd it was. Unusually for a children’s game, there was very little element of competition; on the other hand, there was a subtle undercurrent of violence, or physical jeopardy. It was creative, dramatic and complex, like a strange ballet with different acts, but continuing in an endless cycle (endless, at least, until the bell went to signify the end of lunch break).

Everyone knew the sequence of events and rules, but no-one remembered being taught them. Presumably we learned them from watching or playing with slightly older children. Thus the game must have been passed on by practice and word of mouth, from year group to year group, from elder siblings to younger: a piece of oral folk tradition, an ephemeral artifact of children’s culture.

I was playing it in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it may have existed for many years, even decades, before that, evolving over time. Playground lore has surprising longevity: we also used to play “lurgy” (a form of tag in which being “it” was re-imagined as a disgusting disease that you could only get rid of by touching someone else to pass it on; the defence was to mime a vaccination in the arm and shout “injected!”) even though this originated from an episode of The Goon Show from 1954. The children at St Mary’s may still be playing some descendant of Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese today.

I’ve searched for Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese on the internet, and there are a few references, but none of them have much detail.

In this forum post, the user SuperCracko remembers a version of the game, beginning with the rhyme:

Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese?
Which would you rather please?
Bubblegum
Chewing gum
Around the world in 80 Days (although sometimes replaced with “Stick it up your granny’s bum” for hilarity)

SuperCracko, Popjustice forum post, 12 March 2008

They then state that “some complicated game ensued” although don’t give any details.

In this forum exchange, the user Fragezeichen asks (in German) if anyone can identify the children’s game in which two children hold hands and spin each other in a circle. The user bevalisch responds (in English):

The one where one person spins another was either something to do with statues or one of the categories in “Eggs, Bacon Chips or Cheese”

bevalisch, leo.org forum, 3 August 2009

The user bevalisch mentions it again in another post but gives no details there, either.

It’s mentioned in passing in this even less informative post:

Kids just used to run around and play games such as … eggs bacon chips or cheese

Frankiielot, MouthsOfMums forum, 8 May 2021

A game/song of the same name appears in the index of the book The Musical Playground: global tradition and change in children’s songs and games by Kathryn Marsh (Oxford University Press, 2008) and appears to have been recorded during fieldwork at Springfield Public School in Sydney, Australia.

It’s mentioned on the blog of Kathleen Jennings, an illustrator from Australia, with no details other than to say it’s “convoluted”.

The Mouths of Mums forum is also based in Australia, so it appears that some form of the game, or at least the rhyme, existed on the opposite side of the world to where we played it. But no details of the game or rhyme are given in the book.

And that, as far as I can tell, is the sum total of references to this game on the internet. I’ve also searched for “Eggs, Bacon, Chips and Cheese”, thinking that perhaps that would be an obvious variation, but that gives no results at all.

So, from this evidence, it appears that the game was widespread, existing in both the United Kingdom and Australia. The way it is mentioned off-hand by several forum posters suggests that they remembered it as such a playground staple that it required no more explanation: readers would recognise and understand the game from the name alone. Finally, there appears to be consistency in the following facts:

  1. There is/was a game called “Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese”.
  2. The game included, as a core element, a rhyme beginning with the line “Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese”.
  3. The game was complicated.
  4. It may have involved spinning.

It seems odd that no more detailed record of the game exists. Therefore, I will now describe the game, as far as I can remember it. Note that this is simply the version that existed circa 1990 at St Mary’s C of E Primary School in Welton. No doubt different versions existed elsewhere (SuperCracko’s rhyme is certainly different), and I’d be interested to hear what they were, and when and where they existed.

The game was played in repeated rounds, each broken down into several phases. For clarity, I will name and describe each phase separately, but they were never described as such or given names at the time. The game was simply played through without interruption, indefinitely, with everyone understanding what would happen next at every step of the way.

Phase 1: spinning and throwing

One child is chosen to be in charge of the game for the first round. I will call this child the ‘spinner’.

(NB. I don’t remember this role having a name at the time. I originally wrote this description using the traditional term “It”, but that made it tricky to read. Since I don’t recall “It” being used specifically for this game – although we did use it for tig and other games – I decided to replace it with the term ‘spinner’, as that was a key part of the role.)

The spinner goes to each other child in the game, in turn, and performs the following actions, with the other child being the spinnee.

First, the spinner faces the other child and holds hands with them, left-to-left and right-to-right so that their arms are crossed. He or she then recites the following rhyme:

Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese,
Which would you rather please?
Around the world in 80 days,
Or a trip to China?

This isn’t sung as such, more spoken but with a definite rhythm: the final ‘China’ has to be drawn out to hit the required two stresses to make the whole thing scan.

This rhyme constitutes a cryptic method of asking the question “how fast do you want to be spun?” The spinnee must respond with one of the six possible answers, which are the six items listed in the rhyme:

  1. eggs
  2. bacon
  3. chips
  4. cheese
  5. around the world in 80 days
  6. a trip to China

These items represent different spinning speeds, with “eggs” being the slowest, and “a trip to China” being the fastest.

In practice, most children would choose either “a trip to China” (i.e. spin me as fast as you possibly can) or “around the world in 80 days” (i.e. spin me very fast but not quite top speed). Only very rarely would anyone choose any of the slower, food-based options: it would have been a shameful admission of weakness to opt for anything less than a high speed spin.

Once the spinnee has responded and thereby chosen a speed, the spinner begins spinning the spinnee in a circle around him/herself, accelerating up to the chosen speed (which, as mentioned above, would almost always be “very fast” or “as fast as possible”). Once that speed is reached (and possibly sustained for a while) the spinner lets go of the spinnee. This results in the spinnee flying across the field and falling in a crumpled heap on the ground a few metres away. The spinnee must now stay still in the position they have fallen for the remainder of this phase. Meanwhile, the spinner carries on reciting the rhyme, spinning and throwing all of the children in the game, until everyone except him/herself is lying somewhere on the floor around them.

NB. Anyone who has chosen a slower speed is obligated to play along when thrown, by acting out an exaggerated, slow-motion fall and adopting a suitable position.

Phase 2: dance of the clockworks

The spinner goes around each child in turn, looks at the position they’re in, and chooses something he or she thinks the child resembles in that pose. This was usually an animal, but it could also be a machine, a type of person, etc: as long as it’s something that can move. The spinner whispers this thing into the child’s ear: this is now that child’s role for this phase of the game.

Once all the children have been assigned roles based on their poses, the spinner shouts, “Clockworks awake!” All the children now move around, pretending to be a clockwork version of whatever role they’ve been given: a clockwork lion, a clockwork pirate, a clockwork plane, etc. I don’t remember the spinner having anything to do during this ‘dance of the clockworks’. I guess they just stand and watch the elaborate, surreal dance going on all around them, enjoying the spectacle, and the added satisfaction of knowing that everyone is obeying their will by following the roles they chose.

After watching the dance for a while, the spinner shouts, “Clockworks asleep!” and everyone freezes. The spinner can, if they are happy with the frozen poses the other children are now in, choose to end this phase of the game and move to phase 3.

Alternatively, if they’re not happy with the current set of poses, or they just want to enjoy some more clockwork dancing, they can shout, “Clockworks awake!” again and start another dance, then, “Clockworks asleep!” again to stop it. I don’t remember this being repeated more than two or three times, so I’m not sure if there was explicitly a rule against too many repeats, or if it just wasn’t done in practice.

Once the spinner has given their final command of “Clockworks asleep!”, the game moves into the next phase.

Phase 3: statues

Now commences a game of statues. With all of the children frozen in exaggerated poses from the end of the clockworks phase, the spinner begins watching and examining them for any signs of movement. Whenever the spinner spots a child moving, he or she taps them, and they are released from their pose. They join the spinner in the hunt for movement and are also able to tap children they see moving. This continues until all children except one have been released from their positions.

Phase 4: the ring

The spinner and all of the free children surround the last remaining frozen child in a circle, linking hands.

Unfortunately, this is the part of the game about which my memory is most hazy. There was probably some kind of rhyme or song used here. At the very least, there must have been a command. Either way, the spinner and the other children in the ring somehow initiate what happens next, which is that the child in the middle unfreezes and must attempt to escape from the circle. The children forming the circle try to prevent the escape, although they must keep their hands linked in the ring at all times, which makes this quite tricky. As I remember, the escaping child was usually successful, managing to push their way between the other children’s legs despite their best efforts to ‘wall’ themselves together.

If the child successfully escapes the circle, they become the new spinner and the game returns to phase 1 and continues. If the child doesn’t escape, the previous spinner spins again. I don’t remember what conditions were applied to this – whether the escape attempt was timed in any way, perhaps with a rhyme or chant. My best guess is that there was simply a group consensus reached that the child had had long enough trying and wasn’t going to manage it.

And that’s it. To the best of my memory, that’s how Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese was played in one Lincolnshire primary school around 1990. I’d be fascinated to hear of any other versions.

20 thoughts on “Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese

  1. The only thing I remembered for sure was the rhyme. Ours went (Queensland, Australia):
    “Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese,
    Which would you rather, please,
    Or a chocolate milkshake?”

    Now that I’ve read your description, I definitely remember the clockwork stage! Although I don’t recall using the word “clockwork”. It might just have been “freeze!”, “move!”

    As for the final stage, I can’t remember if it was this game or another. It seems likely to have been this one. The trapped child had to choose from a list of fates. I can’t remember the first. The others were “typewriter” and “washing machine”. For “typewriter” people would aggressively “type” on you while you tried to escape. For “washing machine” they’d join hands and imitate a wash cycle while you did the same.

    • Thanks for the description! It sounds like your version was pretty similar, with only minor differences in the rhyme and terminology, despite being on the opposite side of the globe.

      The last phase with different options sounds fun. I’m pretty sure we didn’t have that element, but I wish we had!

  2. So glad I found this, I was trying to remember this game to teach my kids. My sisters and I spent many hours on our front lawn after school playing this game (also in Queensland, Australia, early 90s). The only thing I could remember apart from the first rhyme, which was the same for us as Kathleen mentioned, was the rhyme we used for the final stage. We would all link hands around the remaining child and chant something like

    “Get up, make your bed
    Who is your boyfriend/girlfriend
    Wash the dishes, dry the dishes
    Polish, tumble or spin?”

    Polish was all the children moving their hands rhythmically in a round polishing action while hands linked, tumble was a similar action without any rhythm and quite rough, and spin was just that, spinning really fast. I remember the tumble being quite unpleasant to escape from!

    • Wake up sleepy head, don’t forget to make your bed, tell us your boyfriend/girlfriend or take the 7 chances: typewriter, washing machine etc

  3. I used to play this at my village school during the 90’s. We had a slightly different rhyme.

    “Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese?
    Which would you rather please?
    Tomato sauce and bubble gum?
    Or HP sauce and treacle tart?”

    I remember one person being in charge and then the rest of us standing in a line with both our hands out facing palms up. The person in charge would go along slapping each hand one after another whilst saying the rhyme, then whoever it landed on would choose the food that they would like. I’m certain there was more to this afterwards but I just can’t remember. I will have to ask my sister. I also don’t know where we got the game from. It must have been older children in the playground.
    I’m now a primary school teacher and have never come across this game on the playground.

  4. In my primary school, it was played similar but not the same. We would sit in a line, with the game leader up the front, and the players would have both hands out on their laps. The game leader would go down the line, slapping everyone’s hands on beat to the rhyme:
    “EGGS, BACON, CHIPS OR CHEESE, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU PLEASE, OR SNOW PEAS!” if the rhyme ended while they slapped on of your hands, they would put their hand behind their back. Once both hands were behind your back, you would go up to the leader and hold hands. They would say, “Fast, Medium or slow?” Most kids added in their own, such as ‘unicorn’ or ‘spaghetti’, and you would choose one. Once you had been spun, you would be sent flying across the floor of the shelter and pose. This continued until everyone was posed and had been told what they had to act out. The leader would yell ACTION and everyone would act out their thing. A few seconds later, they would yell LIGHTS OUT! and everyone would curl up in a ball on the floor. The leader would go around tapping everyone on the back, until one person was left on the floor. Everyone would gather around them and start running in the circle around them chanting the ABCs. If you got to the end of the alphabet, and they hadn’t escaped, you would choose a new game leader but if they did escape, they would become it.

  5. So happy to find this post!! I played this often at my primary school in Hampton (England). I had forgotten a lot of the complexities but your details made the memories come rushing back.
    The differences I now remember are in the initial song –
    “Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese,
    Which would you rather please?
    Around the world in 80 days,
    Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese?”

    This rhyme was said out loud by the spinner, touching each persons head as they sat in a circle [like duck duck goose]. At the end of the rhyme, those who were selected as eggs, bacons, chips or cheeses grouped together, and could spin each other, choosing a slow, medium or fast spin. Those whose heads were touched at any other part of the rhyme were spun individually by the main spinner at the spinners choice of speed. Everyone had to freeze in landing position.
    The spinner then whispered in each persons ear what they had to act out, and yelled ACTION for the play to begin, and FREEZE at some point (eliminating those who were caught moving – the eliminated then helped to catch others). This repeated until the spinner was satisfied, then LIGHTS OUT was shouted, where everyone would curl up in a ball, eyes closed. The spinner would quietly tap the heads of everyone but the worst performer, who was left alone on the floor while the others “woke up” when touched.
    The “chosen ones” then quietly grouped around the unselected person, joined hands in a circle, and on a silent count of 3 everyone would start shouting “WAKE UP SLEEPY HEAD, DONT FORGET TO MAKE YOUR BED!” before counting in unison to 10, whilst spinning like a washing machine around the unselected person, who could begin to attempt escaping as soon as the timer began.
    Those who were successful breaking out of the circle within the count of 10 were then the next spinner; those who did not would be “out”, with a new spinner chosen from the remaining players.

  6. I played a similar game at primary school in the late nineties (South Oxfordshire, UK).
    We had a small hill on our playing field. The children would line up at the top of the hill with their hands out, and the child that was ‘it’ would go along the line slapping their hands saying the following rhyme:

    Eggs, bacon, chips and beans
    Fairy cakes and bumble bees
    Round the world and back again
    How would you like to die?

    The person who the rhyme ended on would choose a method to die – I can’t remember all the options but they included ‘car crash’, ‘poisonous hairspray’, and, because it was the nineties, ‘Titanic’.

    The person who was It would then kill that person by their chosen method and push them down the hill. When you got to the bottom of the hill you froze in position. The It person would then repeat the rhyme until all the children were frozen at the bottom of the hill.

    The person who was It would then go around all the statues and tell them what they looked like they were doing (e.g. skiing, or a dog burying a bone, or whatever). They would then say “Clockwork start!” and all the children would act out what they looked like (skiing or whatever). The person who was It would then call “Clockwork stop! Go to sleep!”. Everyone would lie down, close their eyes and pretend to be asleep.

    Finally, the person who was It would go round all the children one by one to “wake” them, leaving one last person who would then become It, everyone ran back up the hill and the game started over from the beginning.

    I loved playing that game, but I don’t know why our version was so morbid!

  7. I remember in Victoria, Australia ours was;

    “Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese.
    Which would you rather please?
    Coco pops or lemon squeeze,
    Or funniest home video show?”

    Everyone use to sit in a line with their hands turned up and the leader would walk down the line slapping the hands to the song, whoever it ended on had to choose one of the options sung.
    Funniest home video show was the “leader of the round” gave you something to act out and would call action then freeze when they thought it was funny or you got a dare.
    Coco pops was you jumped up and down on the spot and the leader pushed you in the back at any given time and you had to hold the pose you landed in.
    I think lemon squeeze was the leader and the other person held hands and swung each other around until the leader let go.
    One was the leader spun you around while you closed your eyes, then stopped you pushed you so you started walking and you’d usually fall over.
    I think one of the other options was the leader swung you around, but instead of holding both hands they held one hand and one ankle (the leader didn’t let go for this one, they’d gently lay you on the ground afterwards)

    I can’t remember the rest, but ours seemed pretty brutal compared to some of the others I read haha

  8. Wow I’ve been looking for anyone else who remembered this game for the longest time! I’m in NZ, and I distinctly remember playing the game! This is how I remember our game:

    Phase 1:
    This was everyone except the ‘spinner’ in a half circle around the spinner, holding their fists out. The spinner made fists and touched each fist, saying ‘Eggs, bacon, chips and cheese, which one would you ra-ther please!’ and whichever fist the ‘please!’ landed on, had to put that behind their back. When someone lost both fists, they chose Eggs, Bacon, Chips or Cheese (same as you – eggs being slow, cheese being fast) and they spun them around, flinging them on the grass and they froze in that pose. Repeat until everyone is in a pose.

    Phase 2:
    The spinner then did the same as you described – ‘you look like you’re running a race, you look like you’re doing pushups’ etc etc. Then the spinner would yell ‘Clockwork start!’ and everyone would start doing what they were told. When the spinner chose, they’d yell ‘Clockwork stop!’ and everyone had to freeze. Then it was ‘Clockwork sleep!’ and everyone would curl up into balls and hide their eyes so they couldn’t see each other.

    Phase 3:
    The spinner would quietly sneak through the crowd, silently tapping on people, and those people got up, until one person was left. Everyone held hands, swinging back and forth while singing as the person got up,
    ‘Wake up, sleepyhead!
    Don’t forget to make your bed!
    You can’t get out, you can’t get out!
    Seven (I think) hits or your boyfriend’s name!’

    And if they didn’t want to say their boyfriends name (or crush lol), using your clasped hands, you’d push them (not too hard!) from one side of the circle to the other seven (I think!) times. Then that person who was chosen for the end gets to be the next spinner, and you do it all over again!

    So many memories of primary school with that one!
    That would have been sometime between 1989 – 1995 sometime.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

  9. My vague memory from school in country Victoria (Aust) is:
    “Eggs bacon chips or cheese which would you rather please? Smoothie or a milkshake?” And I also remember the chant at the end “wake up sleepy head and don’t forget to make your bed!” So funny to find all these other versions online. Thanks for sharing! :-)

  10. Jess B’s version is the one I’m more familiar with in terms of the stages that the game progressed to. Wowww! So many memories!

    I played it in South Africa in the early 2000’s. It went like:

    “Eggs, Bacon chips or cheese,
    which one would you rather please?
    Around the world or fuzzy peas
    Or a story, or over the moon?”

    But it was played kinda like how “oranges and lemons” is done, with 2 kids facing each other, holding hands and moving them up and down in while other kids run through until the rhyme ends and whoever is inside the “hand tunnel” will have to choose one of the options from the rhyme above.

    I remember one of the options would result in a kids nose being pulled, around the world was when you spin a kid around, story was obvi tell them some weird 10 second story, over the moon – they had to froggy jump over someone. Once these were done, the kid will be pushed and either “Statue/Freeze” was yelled. The game went on in the “oranges and lemons” style until all kids had chosen an option from the rhyme beside the “hand tunnel” kids (will refer to as HTK from now on)

    The HTK would then whisper whatever they wanted each kid to portray like maybe a princess or car and boy did things get weird here lol and upon hearing the HTK yell either unfreeze or action, everyone would begin performing the role allocated to them until LIGHTS OUT where everyone goes to sleep and you tap all but one kid as Jess B says.
    I think however, we used to surround the sleeping kid and say “wakey wakey sleeping beauty” while they tried to escape the circle.

    Fun times urghhh

    • Omg! I’m also from South Africa and played this I’m the late 2000s.
      Ours was pretty much the same except the rhyme was
      “Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese
      Which would you rather please
      Bubblegum
      Or storytime
      Or jump over the moon”
      Bubble would be the spinning, storytime the crazy story, and jump over the moon the froggy jump.
      I’ve always wondered if anyone else knew it so this is really cool.
      Sometimes I questioned if it was real or not lol.

  11. So interesting to read all the different versions of this game. I played it on the Central Coast of Australia from around 2000 – 2005.
    For some reason the rhyme came into my head one day but I couldn’t for the life of me remember how the game actually worked. From reading this post and the comments, I vaguely remember a few details but still not the whole game.

    This is how I remember the rhyme:
    Eggs, bacon, chips, or cheese,
    Which would you rather please?
    Scooby fast
    Or Scooby slow
    May I take your order please?

    I remember all the kids holding their hands out and the spinner going along and tapping the hands to the rhyme and when one person had both their hands behind their back, that person would get spun, choosing the speed.

    That’s all I could ever remember of the game. I don’t really remember acting things out but it could have happened..

    I also vaguely remember everyone making a circle around one person and saying ‘wake up sleepy head, don’t forget to make your bed’ and the person trying to escape.

    But I’m sure there were more details to the game that I just can’t remember.
    I have memories of so many odd games we played in the school playground and as weird as they were, I remember having so much fun.

  12. I’ve always wondered if anyone else knew a version of this game!

    The version we played at primary school was called Mr Moley, and our rhyme was:

    Eggs, bacon, fish and chips,
    Strawberry ice cream,
    Including pepsi cola and chopped ice.

    It started with everyone in a circle around one person in the middle, with both hands out. The spinner would go around for every beat of the poem pointing at each person. If the final beat landed on you, you’d put one hand behind your back, and when you were landed on for the second time, it was your turn to go. The person in the middle would steer you by the shoulders on a winding walk and say “One day, Mr Moley was walking along, when suddenly, he felt a big push!”, as they pushed you forward. You’d land in a dramatic position and freeze until everyone had been pushed.

    Then the pusher would go round one by one and name your position (similar to others, an activity or profession or animal etc, but you’d be known as a toy), then they’d shout “toys awake!” and you’d take on your imaginary role, moving around as that thing or character, until they yelled “toys asleep!”, and which point you’d freeze again. I think possibly couched down now and with your eyes closed.

    The pusher would go round quietly tapping all but one person on the shoulder, who would get up and form a circle, holding hands, around the remaining person. Then the circle would move round the person and start chanting the alphabet. As soon as that started the person in the middle would have to jump up and try and break free – if they managed it before the end of the alphabet, they got to be the person in the middle in the next round, otherwise the original pusher got to go again.

    (Thanks to Amy for filling in some of the gaps in my memory for this!)

  13. Yes!! We played this too with some slight variations.

    Our rhyme was

    Eggs bacon chips or cheese
    Say what you want before I sneeze
    Around the world in 80 days
    Eggs bacon chips or CHEESE!

    And our linked hands part at the end was called the cooking pot!

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