John Downing: Even Angela Merkel likes her frites, but don’t mention hot-dog inflation to an Icelander

Now do stay with me here, because there is a curious link between spiralling hot-dog prices in Reykjavik and that great auld 19th-century Dublin street song The Waxies’ Dargle. Think of the killer pay-off to the song – with no terrible pun intended: “When food is scarce and you see the hearse / You’ll know you have died of hunger.”