The Idler

BEHOLD THE SPLENDOUR OF THE CRISP

RALPH SHARANSKY delves into the hidden history of the wondrous dried potato snack

And so it falls upon me to exfoliate on the matter of crisps. The crisp is truly a wonderful thing. It serves as the antithesis of real food – you don’t cook it or have to store it carefully. (Although opening the pack can sometimes be a bit of a struggle.) Crisps live in an ambient world inside their packs, a kind of crisp micro-universe with its own laws and customs, all of which are too arcane to openly discuss in this humble journal.

The consumption of crisps frees the Child Within. Personally, my Child Within has more than enough freedom, enjoying unlimited amounts of jelly and a charge account at Hamleys. It is my Adult Without that barely gets a peek, from behind the mountain of empty crisp packets and cans of Tizer.

Ask anyone for their crisps memories and they will bore you with recollections of obscure maize-based crunchy snacks such as the horror-craze inspired Smith’s Bones. I shall not rehearse this tawdry business here. Crisps are the future – what benefit is there wallowing in the memories of the legendary Huntley and Palmer Salt and vinegar crisp whose tang was so intense that people were unable to speak for four days after eating one and yet whose over-intensified flavour was so addictive that purchasers would rip open the pack so that they could lick the innards of the artificially flavoured mind-fuck? It was known as “licking the wrapper” and served as understudy for a still more harmful behaviour sponsored by General Noriega and sundry Columbians in days of future past.

WHO INVENTED CRISPS?

The crisp was invented in 1853 by George Crum. Mr Crum was an American-Indian Chief who was employed by The Oppressors to work in a posh restaurant in Saratoga, New York State. When one Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railway magnate, ordered pommes frites he was dismayed to see that they were not cut thinly enough. This wanker sent back the chips no less than three times, demanding that they should be thinner each time. So the proud Indian Chief finally got so pissed with this that he cut the potatoes into wafer-thin slices and then tossed them into boiling oil till they were crisp and golden. Whether the chief added his own special sauce to the mix is a detail lost in time. The crisp is therefore a foodstuff borne from the struggle of oppressed minorities to take the piss out of the ruling classes. Surprisingly, it does not feature as such in Das Kapital, or even in the minor works of Engels. Is it not time to reinstate the crisp as the crunchiest tool of class war that has ever been devised?

THE GREEN CRISP

It is clear that people have it too easy these days. Where once the infamous “green crisp” threatened to infiltrate the innards of unwary children, thus becoming the savoury equivalent of the Bad Brown Acid at Woodstock, modern industrial practices have removed this maverick from the food chain forever. There is now no risk in eating a packet of crisps. And yet were the terrible green crisps a sign of risk, of danger and of the sudden arbitrary mutability of pleasure into distress? I blame all our social ills on the disappearance of the green crisp. We might as well live in one of the perfect Edenic societies (actually run by an alien computer) that Captain Kirk was so fond of spoiling. And therein lies a lesson for us all.

THE TRAGEDY OF GOLDEN WONDER

Golden Wonder is Britain’s superior crisp. That is flatly undeniable. Yet they are hard to find in today’s dog-eat-potato corporate crisp market. A few obscure newsagents and – oddly enough – baker’s shops are the last remaining outposts for this once proud brand. (Unless you live in Scotland where GW is as ubiquitous as Iron Bru, for historical reasons pertaining to the Jacobite Rebellion and other accidents of economic determinism.) Golden Wonder invented flavours – if not for them we would still be living in a ready salted world. But, as I have found out so often in life, there are no points for pioneering. The prophet is rarely recognised in his own land – or indeed anywhere else.

WALKERS KILLED SMITH’S

The vast evil empire that is Walkers bought the Smith’s brand name a few years ago. It remained as a lonely promontory on a few unsupported brands such as the underrated “Square Crisp” until recently. Then Walkers rebranded the aforementioned geometric savoury delight in its own image, and we suddenly see Mr Lineker extolling its virtues on a nightly basis. The Smith’s brand is dead. Yet it was Frank Smith, in 1920, who began the first modern industrial production of the crisp in his North London garage. Had he realised what was to become of his brand he might have decided to become a cabaret performer in Weimar Germany and Britain would have lost its tastiest snack.

THE CRISP – TOWARDS BOLD NEW HORIZONS OF EXCELLENCE

Product innovation is the key to crisp success. The world’s top scientists are constantly striving to improve flavours and invent new shapes and new taste experiences. Expect to see some of the following at your local cornershop soon:

2p Crisps: Following on from the cult-status of such cheap and cheerful brand as the 10p Transformers. The crisp magnates are planning to introduce the 2p pack. This will be a pack as small as your thumbnail and will only contain dust from the wood-chippings of Alabaman survivalists’ log cabins.

Shit Flavour: The latest extension of the kiddie’s “dare-you-eat-me” format is the Shit Flavoured Crisp. Crunchy arse-shaped maize snacks will actually taste of fresh human excrement. Your statutory rights will not be affected.

Smart Crisps: Will be the crisp for the Information age. Embedded with tiny micro-chips they will send information back to your head direct from your tummy, informing you if you are full up or hungry or if you feel a bit sick.

ISSUES ARISING FROM UK CRISP FLAVOUR SEGMENTATION

Cheese and Onion: The big daddy of crisp flavour, Cheese and Onion was first introduced in 1962, to coincide with the Cuban Missile crisis. This was no mere coincidence. It was felt that if enough people in the free world ate these disgusting mutations then the collective halitosis that ensued would deter any red Commie invaders from landing on our shores. Cheese and Onion is currently used as contraception in catholic countries, for largely the same reason. This is why snogging the Pope is generally thought to be unwise.

Ready Salted: Incredibly popular considering its radical blandness. Do these people have no imagination or are they simply opting out of a world overloaded with consumer choices? Sometimes I think that the world is ready salted….and sometimes I think not.

Salt & Vinegar: Popularly known as Sally Valley, salt and vinegar is the crisp taste that towers like a towering colossus over all other flavours. Born from a close tie to the fish and chip shop, excessive flavourings may occasionally burn your tongue but that is surely a small price to pay for such culinary excellence.

Smoky Bacon: Surprisingly popular, some of the success of Smoky Bacon must be due to ironic Jewish folk who eat this flavour safe in the knowledge that it has had zero porcine proximity. Semiotically, the signifier and signified of bacon flavour are in place, but the referent is nowhere to be seen. Hence Derrida’s fascination with Smoky Bacon crisps – “I snack on an aporia” he said, with joyful Rabbinical equivocation.

Roast Chicken: The UK’s fourth favourite flavour has never really struck the cultural chords that other flavours have managed.

Barbecue: Still holding out strong since it was introduced during the great Australian fixation of 1987, when all people called Bruce did exceptionally well (cf. Springsteen, Willis and Forsyth). Remember: eat these and you are chomping on the bones of generations of Aboriginal peoples.

Beef and Onion: I think they made this up. Have you ever seen such a thing as beef and onion?

Prawn Cocktail: Delightful Eighties brand, somewhat eclipsed by Skips in more recent times. This borrowing from the chicken-in-a-basket indulgences of high petit bourgeois society has clearly seen better days.

Worcester Sauce: A low rating because people don’t like to admit to it – like voting Tory. Is Worcester Sauce the flavour that dare not speak its name?

Tomato Ketchup: Trying to follow the logic of Salt ‘n’ Vinegar (i.e. Something you put on chips.)

Pickled Onion: Like Cheese ‘n’ Onion but worse. If C ‘n’ O are contraception, then pickled onion is an irreversible vasectomy.