When I went to Ireland and stayed in B&Bs, we just didn’t plan on eating more than a light snack for the rest of the day, until dinner time. It made it easier, only having to look for one place to eat each day instead of two or three.
A lot of Cafes (& not just the “greasy spoon” type ) do all day breakfasts.
I’ll often have one for lunch or dinner if i’m out. (sossy, bacon, fried egg, baked beans, fried bread, mushrooms, tomato + mug of tea.)
Yeah, cafes and diners serving all-day breakfasts are pretty common on this side of the pond, too. Though even at such a place, the meal will usually be a bit smaller than the full English/Irish breakfast, and there will be a number of meal options that consist almost entirely of carbs (a stack of pancakes and syrup with a little bacon on the side, for instance).
A cafe I used to work in (in the UK) did a pretty decent trade in a slightly abbreviated form of the Full English on Sundays and holidays, the rest of the time we’doften get workmen ordering stuff like bacon and egg inna bun with a coffee, normally to take away, at breakfast time, but very few full sit-down fry-ups.
I think it stopped being a regular thing for workmen to have at home when having a housewife to cook it and clean up after stopped being so common. Too much faff when everyone’s heading out to work, even for those with active jobs.
I used to cook a big Full English about once a month - it was a Sunday brunch sort of thing - served late morning after rising from bed later than normal. That was while my two kids were still at home. After they moved out, I reckon we only do the full fryup a handful of times per year.
Smaller fryups such as the fried egg sandwich, bacon bap or eggy-in-the-basket happen more often, but not more frequently than weekly
There’s a place called Market Diner in Brighton, usually open 24 hours, that does a good fry up. In the early hours at weekends it would of course be full of party-goers satisfying a post-alcohol hunger. The fullest breakfast is the Gut Buster but for a little bit more money you could also go for the Mega Buster:
two Eggs, a fried slice, bacon, two sausages, two black puddings, two burgers, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, chips, bread and butter, plus the all-important cup of tea.
Drunken eyes looking at that on the menu are definitely much bigger than the stomach.
There are a couple of low rent hotel chains near me that are famous in the locale for one price all you can eat full English - usually full up of trades vans.
Used to be something we did a lot when working weekend overtime, start at 6 am and full English around 0930 - finish the work at 14.00.
There are plenty of such little cafes around - lots of take-outs and usually just a few tables inside. They are cheap to set up, costs to run are quite small. Lots of local companies will phone in orders for their staff and send off a driver along with a junior to actually get out and collect, & pay.
Doing this at home seems to me to be more of a weekend thing - for a start quite a few items do not sell into single servings, so unless you are preparing for three or more you’ll have various items left over to cook another day.
Your average pack of sausages will have 6-8 in there, bacon pack will usually have 8 rashers, tin of beans serves 2 but the tin of tomatoes will likely serve 4 small helpings.You end up with orphan items or you have to eat maybe more than you need which kind of unbalances the fry-up - too much sausage or not enough of something else.
I’ll bet the people who picture Brits “havin’ a bit of a fry-up for brekkies” all the time would also assume that Yanks have plates stacked with pancakes and eggs and bacon and bowls of brightly-colored Poofy Puffs, oh and tall glasses of orange juice every morning. That’s what shown on the adverts, and in more than a few TV shows. But who has the time… or the disregard for their cardiovascular system?
It’s a lot more likely that a Brit will have an EBCB rather than a full fry-up. As noted, even those are a lot less frequent than you would imagine.
We mostly reserve them for after house parties (pre-covid), to feed guests who stayed the night. Excellent hangover cure.
On one memorable occasion, one of said guests volunteered to help, and he set fire to the cooker while grilling sausages…
When I worked in Scotland in the kitchen an upstcale hotel, staff were offered full fry-ups every day. I obliged daily for the first week or more until I realized my body probably wasn’t going to like me for much longer if I kept it up. The rest of the staff, during that time, only very occasionally partook.
Stayed in B&Bs for a couple of weeks while on a meandering drive from Cornwall to Inverness. Full English the first couple of days, then gradually started dropping items every few days until down to eggs and toast. Every B&B operator said that is the typical progression - rarely does anyone do Full English for their entire holiday.
The Full English saved my life once. I’d flown to London on a moment’s notice, and the only flight I could afford was a weird O’Hare>Charleston>LaGuardia>Heathrow red-eye with a layover after all the airport cafes were closed.
I got into London and walked a long ways to my hotel, dumped my bags (room wasn’t ready at the hotel I’d been moved to, due to the original hotel not having my reservation) and decided to see the neighborhood. Suddenly I got woozy and headachy and things were spinning, and I suddenly realized… I hadn’t slept or eaten anything (besides tiny in-flight pretzels) in 24 hours.
Turned a corner, looking for any place to collapse and saw a hand-scrawled sign : BIG ENGLISH BREK! WITH COFFEE!
I can still picture it: the hugest plate, eggs, three kinds of sausage, limp bacon, and piled so high with fried tomatoes, baked beans and chips. As I wolfed it down, I could literally feel the nutrients entering my bloodstream.
Just in time… Thank you, little kebab joint near the Gloucester Road tube station!
What, no Spam?!? 
In one of his BBC documentaries, Dr Michael Mosley had his blood analyzed after consuming a Full Breakfast. After it was centrifuged, there was a visible layer of fat floating on the top.
I personally love the damned things, but I make them only two or three times a year. I usually cook two of everything at a time, which is enough to last me for two whole days. If I eat around 11:00 am, I don’t want anything else for the rest of the day.
Well, I have certainly never regretted ordering a full English/Irish breakfast. Or the U.S. diner equivalent, which in my case would be a cheddar omelette with hash browns and sausages, buttered rye toast, large tomato juice with lemon, and black coffee.
The grilled mushroom and tomato is a fine alternative to potatoes, and I love a nice white pudding.
I’ve spent about 30 days with three different families in London over the last 25 years or so. One Jewish, one South Asian one “English”. Never had a full English at their houses. Cereal, toast, muffins, fried eggs, yogurt, paratha, whatever.
Stayed at a small hotel in London for a couple of nights. Full of tourists. Boom! Full English!
Reckon it’s a tourist thing now.
I’d still try to eat as much as possible just for the calories, provided the food tastes good, as I don’t like to try to find a place to eat lunch in the middle of touristing, and can work up quite an appetite walking around. I appreciate a generous hotel buffet, although the only thing I can remember in the English ones I’ve had that aren’t typically found in a generous American buffet is fried eggs*, but I’ve only been to two of them in England. If I were to stay at a B+B I’d probably want eggs, potatoes of some sort, toast of some sort, and plenty of meat of all varieties. I’d skip the mushrooms and beans, and I try tomatoes when they are in a buffet but wouldn’t want to pay for them.
*And different-shaped but still same-tasting bacon. I have seen grilled tomatoes at American buffets and it seemed odd before I learned about the Full English, so I guess they ported it over unless it’s part of some Americans breakfast tradition as well that I missed out on growing up.
Also, looking at Wikipedia I see this picture. What’s the triangular food at the bottom right? I’ve had potato wedges at English breakfast buffets that look like this, but potatoes are not mentioned in the caption, only toast, which I don’t see. Is this some sort of toast?
I think it’s some sort of potato patty. Like Arby’s hash browns. Only British.
Yes, fried hashed brown potato patties. Triangular version of Mr. Dee’s and other:
Hash Brown Patties | Mr. Dee's