I’m not much of a food snob. In fact I was brought up on working class foods including things like offal, reconstituted meat and suet, and delicious they were too.
While foodstuffs like these may not be the most healthy choices, I’m sure they’re a lot better for a growing lad than the diet of burgers, crisps, chocolate, energy drinks and weed kids these days seem to subsist on.
However, in these sniffy times old-fashioned food has gone off the menu somewhat. This can’t be because of price, nutrition or taste – instead it seems to be due to a kind of muddled food snobbery that okays £1 ready-made chicken kormas from Iceland but turns its nose up at deviled kidneys.
So there’s not much of that kind of food that’s off the menu for me, including spam – which is fairly tasty. However, spam has a problem. It’s so deeply out-of-fashion that it’s virtually taboo, like smoking on television, glue-sniffing or masturbation.
This effort to raise spam’s profile seems to be have been made 25 years ago, which is oddly appropriate, but seems hopelessly doomed to failure.
The idea that spam could serve as ‘a special tea’ is just about acceptable, if it’s a kids’ meal. But to suggest that serving up a plate of spam to your loving wife on your anniversary is going to end with anything other than a slap in the face and night on the sofa is wishful thinking indeed. Even if your wife is Pamela Spam from Spamtown, Spamania. And even then it’s pretty lazy.
I feel sorry for the people given the Spam Up advert brief, I really do. Because in this day and age trying to convince people that spam is cool is like trying to convince them that a ball and cup is Christmas 2010’s big toy craze.