Friday Quickie - Why "Plain Crisps" is nothing but hate speech

Crisps / fries , Potato / potahto...

Welcome to the first “Friday Quickie”¹ and also the first Talk About Pop Culture post about crisps. That is to say, “chips” if you’re in the USA. Not to be confused with the UK where “chips” means … actually, Ringo Starr can explain it better than I can.

“Dear Marge, thanks for the fab painting of yours truly! I hung it on me wall! You're quite an artist. In answer to your question, yes we do have Hamburgers and Fries in England, but we call French Fries "chips"! Love, Ringo. PS. Forgive the lateness of my reply.”

There was a story on the BBC website this week that was just so damn British it makes you want to cheer / shake your head sadly.

Crisp aficionados have flocked to Worcestershire to get their hands on a discontinued favourite flavour.

Walkers' Worcester² sauce variety was axed two years ago, but returned to shelves on Tuesday at one newsagent in the condiment's home city.

Would-be customers lined up outside Charlie's Convenience Store on Barbourne Road before it opened for a taste of the limited supply.

One said it was worth the five-hour round train trip from London adding: "I would travel the globe for a packet of crisps."

The self-proclaimed "crisp connoisseur", 37, said the returning purple packet signalled a "defining" flavour from her childhood.

"It was kind of like that wild-card flavour that was always quite a pleasant surprise," she said.

"I was kind of sad when it was discontinued."

She would not disclose exactly how many packets she would take home but hinted it would be "quite a few".

I note with approval how she rightly refers to herself as a “crisp connoisseur” while the article dubs her the less serious-sounding title of “aficionado”.

That’s worse than confusing a nerd for a geek.

The one knows things, the other merely loves them.

Be better, BBC. Be better.

The wild-card flavour, always a pleasant surprise.

This fills me with joy at the potential imminent countrywide return of Worcester Sauce crisps, this obviously being the endgame for Walkers. They aren’t going to reset those production line flavour silos for the sake of a few hundred packets, now are they?

I also feel a bit sad that they got rid of them in the first place. I guess when / if they come back permanently I’d better make sure I buy loads and loads of them. Then if they disappear again, my conscience will be clear.

When it comes down to it, though, the flavour I really like is Ready Salted.

I particularly appreciate how a simple concept like fried potatoes with salt can differ so wildly between manufacturers.

I have encountered a alarming degree of prejudice and victimisation over this.

People look at you strangely if you say you prefer them. The missus gets it, though. ‘Tis a marriage made in crisp heaven.

Once, a work colleague, queuing up behind me at the vending machine, called me a monster for buying a packet of Ready Salted crisps, only she called them “plain”.

That is so insulting it borders on offensive.

I COULD have said “I suppose I could call you “plain” because you aren’t wearing make-up then”, but I didn’t.³

The point is that Ready Salted is an actual flavour, as distinct from Smiths’ Salt’n’Shake crisps which have a little blue bag of salt in so you can have as much or as little as you like.

When I was a kid, I used to get two packets at a time, empty the contents of both salt bags into one, shake them up and gorge on the double-espresso style result, savouring each sinful salt hit.

Then I would move on to the completely unsalted crisps to enjoy that unique taste of pure potato perfection.

Sounds unhealthy? Maybe. I get my salt addiction from my Dad. His thing was to peel an orange, separate it into segments and eat it with a big pile of salt, into which he dipped each individual segment before consumption.

He made it to 86, fair play, so maybe its healthy, who knows?⁴

I miss salt’n’shake crisps. Yeah, I know they still exist but if crisp experts are to be believed then the modern version (made not by Smiths but by Walkers) is but a pale shadow of former glories.

Or maybe it’s just that sometimes the past should be left alone, just in case you realise it wasn’t as good as you thought at the time.

“Bloody love crisps! Don’t you?”

Other posts you may enjoy:

Excerpts From A Cluttered Mind #7

Worth A Read #2 - There's Something About Susans

An Interesting Fact about the Spurs team of 1977-78

1. The change was made because people generally don’t have time for more than a quickie on a Friday, whereas they usually have time for something longer than a quickie on a Sunday.

2. Pronounced “War Chest Ear”

3. She was quite fierce.

4. It isn’t healthy. Seriously, you shouldn’t do this more than once in your life. Twice, at a pinch. Heh.