READING about a recent hauling of a mucky takeaway into court by the council’s public safety folk has got me pondering a paradox.

Why is it that so many spotlessly clean ones seem to go to the wall while the ones that are anything but clean apparently have lots of customers before and after being caught out?

I could name at least a dozen takeaways that have closed due to lack of patrons, in spite of the fact that you could have eaten your dinner off the floor. Indeed, in the cases of at least eight of them I actually did eat my dinner off the floor as it was late on a Friday night and I didn’t want to risk standing up in case I fell over again and hurt myself.

Meanwhile, establishments that are the complete opposite seem to thrive until the inspectors come a-calling. When it comes to attracting a large clientele, it seems many of them have something their cleaner competitors lack – and I don’t just mean e.coli on the countertops.

With this in mind, I’ve decided t set up a special consultancy called Squalor Incorporated to help those planning to open new establishments. If you are such a person, my mission will be to add that homely hint of filth to your premises without leaving you open to civil suits and potential manslaughter charges.

We’ll start with your front-of-house area, where the customers place and wait for their orders. I’m in touch with a team of chemical engineers who tell me they can supply a special polymer which looks exactly like about five years’ worth of undisturbed grease. Thick enough, once it sets, for customers to write their names in with a finger, Magi-Grease has that authentic ‘stale fat with a hint of decomposition and BO’ aroma.

It can be sprayed on to every surface from the counter to the walls and floor, as well as those hard-to-reach places such as the corners of ceilings, the leaves of pot plants and curling flyers for taxi companies that went bust in 2002.

For an extra fee, we’ll hire a couple of jobbing actors to appear at your premises occasionally and pretend to have a fight in the queue. For a supplement on top of that fee, we’ll also hire people to bring in children at about midnight, prompting everybody in the queue to wonder who the hell brings kids to a takeaway at such a time.

Our service doesn’t just cover front-of-house, though. We’ll issue your staff with aprons so artfully caked in authentic-looking fake blood, muck and giblets as to call to mind Victorian headlines about ’Orrible Murders in Whitechapel.

We’ll sprinkle fake dandruff on every shoulder and collar and teach your people to master the special cough that makes people wonder uneasily about TB. Something else we’ll teach them is that every time they disappear into the kitchen, they should press a button to activate a sound effect of a lavatory flushing, and emerge behind the counter half a second later, rub their hands briefly on their apron and then pick up some food – preferably something absorbent, such as a burger bun.

Detail is everything, so each implement visible to the customer will be coated with the same stuff we spray on the staff’s aprons, and on every surface visible to the public in the tantalising moments when the kitchen door is open.

That view will also include a row of rubber chickens on meathooks, plus one stuffed cat hanging at the end of the row so as to attract fans of urban legends.