A QUESTION OF TASTE AND DECENCY

Can anyone follow what is going on with the crisps flavours?

I get ready salted - that, to me, makes sense. There's a potato product motif there, like chips or French fries. And I think we can safely bracket salt and vinegar in there as well. When eating fried potato products, we add salt. Gotcha.

Then you cut across to the cheese variants - cheese, cheese and onion, the specific cheese types named on the more expensive crisps. And that works on a jacket potato kind of deal, so I can understand that.

But where did they get prawn cocktail from? Who was sitting at the development team of the crisp manufacturers thinking that the marketplace really needed that flavour?

Worcester sauce? Ketchup? Chicken? Where are these flavours appearing from? Now, I've eaten chicken with potatoes, but I don't think I've ever considered a chicken flavoured potato. It sounds like something they would eat on the long flight to colonise another planet.

It seems to me that they're coming up with new combinations of flavours for the crisps, then they are trying to guess what they can sell them as.

"We like it, but we can't really market these as Flavouring E-7 Crisps, Bob. Have you got an alternative name for them?"

"Sure. Let's call them - quail egg flavour."

"Mmm-mmm, tasty!"