Pasty-dodger George Osborne probably expected the fallout from the budget to focus on the top rate tax cut to 45p, which gave rich people more cash, or the freeze on tax allowances for pensioners, which gave poor people less.

But the public quickly swept aside such trivia. The key issue for Brits, it has emerged, is the price of a sausage roll from Greggs. And George Osborne was clearly unprepared for that. Asked yesterday the last time he had bought a pasty in Greggs, it took every ounce of his composure not to laugh out loud at the improbability of it all, before he remembered that we are all in this together.

“I can’t remember the last time I bought a pasty in Greggs,” Osborne replied, straight-faced, while everyone else suggested the answer might possibly be never.

“That rather sums it up,” replied Labour MP John Mann, seemingly suggesting that if Osborne regularly got his driver to pull up outside the Westminster branch of Greggs and fetch him a Steak Bake, the Pasty Tax would have been scrapped at the planning stage. .

Meanwhile, Greggs is riding high on the controversy. In the immediate aftermath of Osborne being asked the question, Greggs share price hit a high of £5.26 since the news of the tax hike broke and the share price nosedived.

Yesterday Greggs CEO Ken McMeikan visited number 10 to complain about the Pasty Tax, before finding himself on Newsnight, where he explained why Greggs does not offer hot takeaway food.

Paxman wondered whether McMeikan considered Greggs sausage rolls to be “uniquely privileged”. But McMeikan insisted that its savouries were not guaranteed to be hot, adding that he had given the government “plenty to think about” earlier on, and would campaign “on behalf of the British consumer and the bakery industry” before painting a picture of job losses and closures of business as a result of the tax.

But the proposals - as they stand - give Greggs little room to manoeuvre and the government needs cash. It will not give up 20% of the 140 million sausage rolls Greggs sells every year without a fight. However, it’s not all bad news for Greggs. While its share price is down, its public stock has never been higher. The last day or two has seen an outpouring of love for the high street baker. A couple of weeks ago your average punter would have described Greggs as cheap and cheerful, somewhere that does a nice line in sausage rolls. But today Greggs was trending on Twitter worldwide. By the afternoon #pastygate was at number two. Greggs was also splashed all over the front page of the red tops. The Daily Mirror likened its savouries to a “pocket-sized play on the beef Wellington”.

If all publicity is good publicity, then Greggs is currently enjoying a bellyful. And it hasn’t cost them a penny. Yet.

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