Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
THE GREAT BRITISH FAKE OFF!
From a white wine dyed red to mashed potato that came in a packet, a new programme takes a nostalgic trip back to the mind-boggling birth of processed food
For those of us of a certain age they are names that evoke not just our childhood, but an impossibly thrilling and futuristic world: Findus Crispy Pancakes, Cadbury’s Smash, Bird’s Angel Delight, and Fab ice lollies.
These were some of the foods that were introduced in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Heavily processed and with little nutritional merit, they seemed, nonetheless, startlingly sophisticated.
‘I realise I may be wearing incredibly rose-tinted spectacles but there is something very warm and nostalgic about that era,’ says chef Simon Rimmer, who presents a two-part documentary, Britain’s Favourite Food, on Channel 4, which pays homage to that period. It tracks down the stories and people behind some of these products, which were often dreamt up not by cooks but by advertising executives.
‘For our parents’ generation food was food. Then there was this explosion of branded products: Ski yoghurts, Lean Cuisine, Blue Nun, Angel Delight.’
Le Piat D’Or, the best-selling wine of the early 1980s, for instance, was the brainchild mostly of Tom Jago, head of new product development at the drinks division of the Grand Metropolitan conglomerate. He’d spotted that British consumers loved the idea of sophisticated red wine, but most didn’t like the taste of it; they preferred sweeter white wines, particularly Blue Nun. To test the market Blue Nun was dyed red using vegetable dye and given to consumers to try. ‘ They were delighted,’ recalls Tom.
To make a sweet red for real, they copied the process used by Blue Nun – adding sweet grape juice to the wine at the last stage before bottling. The French winemakers were appalled but Grand Metropolitan didn’t care and Piat became the perfect brand, ‘ French but not too French,’ says Tom, whose ads ended with the catchphrase, ‘Les Français adore Le Piat D’Or.’
Of course, the French didn’t adore it at all. ‘They wouldn’t touch it. The only place in France we sold it was Calais and the ports,’ says Tom. ‘People were buying it to take back to England.’ Le Piat D’Or was launched in the mid-1970s and quickly became Britain’s favourite wine, selling well over 3 million bottles a year.
Many brands relied heavily on TV advertising, which exploded in an era of just one commercial channel, allow- DAILY MAIL WEEKEND ing great adverts to be viewed by millions. Possibly the most famous advert was for Smash, the instant potato dish manufactured by Cadbury. It was launched in 1969, the year man landed on the moon – astronaut food for a country gripped by the space race. Initially, the black-and-white adverts featured a nuclear family and the product sold wel l, but not spectacula rly. Then in 1974 advertising copywr i ter Ch r is Wilkins suggested using laughing Martians in the adverts. ‘We hit upon the idea that if a flying saucer did come down to earth and see the process of making real mashed potato they might find it hilarious,’ he says.
The ads were a huge hit with the general public, cleverly using humour to eradicate the guilt some housewives felt about deciding to feed their families convenience foods. The laughing Martians – voted the best advert of the century by industry magazine Campaign – helped Smash (which Simon Rimmer says, ‘Smells of glue and
‘Smash smells of glue and tastes disgusting’
tastes disgusting’) become a favourite in families’ shopping baskets.
The explosion in convenience food went hand in hand with the increase in the number of women going out to work. Polly Russell, a food historian and curator at the British Library, says, ‘In 1950, about 36 per cent of married women were working. By the early 1970s that number was 47 per cent.’ The era saw the arrival of products that children could prepare themselves when they came home from school if both parents were at work, from Findus Crispy Pancakes and Birds Eye Potato Waffles to Bird’s Angel Delight, the instant dessert that was whisked up with milk and used cutting-edge technology to create artificial flavours such as butterscotch, strawberry and even tropical fruit.
Products were also marketed towards the health-conscious. In the early 80s Findus launched the massively successful Lean Cuisine, ready-meals with restaurant-inspired dishes such as Kashmiri chicken curry and zucchini lasagne. The claim was that each serving was 300 calories or less – achieved by the miniscule portion size. James Thickett, the product’s assistant brand manager, says, ‘There wasn’t much in them. We wouldn’t have been able to make a meat lasagne under 300 calories so we stuffed them with courgettes. The portions were quite small. I cooked all 13
varieties with my flatmate, ate them in one go and still had room for pudding.’
Children were targeted by the advertisers too. ‘This was the time when the culture of childhood comes into its own,’ explains Simon. ‘The parents of children of the 1970s had more disposable income than before. Children in this period universally received pocket money.’ And the food companies, particularly ice lolly manufacturers, were ruthless in trying to persuade children to hand over their cash.
Zoom, a lolly shaped like a rocket, was a particular hit when it launched in 1963. Made by Lyons Maid, the company used Gerry Anderson puppets to advertise the lolly, whose slogan was, ‘Out of this world’. But there was a flaw. ‘When we did the research we found that Zoom was mostly appealing to boys because of the rocket shape,’ recalls David Brown, then marketing manager at Lyons Maid. ‘So we set about trying to find something that appealed to girls.’ Lyons Maid came up with Fab. ‘This was a prettier lolly, if you will. Strawberry and vanilla, dipped in chocolate and covered in very pretty sugar strands,’ says David, who happily admits that the market research came first, the product design and recipe came second. Its slogan, when launched in 1967, was, ‘The First Ice Lolly For Girls’. Thunderbirds puppet Lady Penelope was used to advertise it. Indeed, her car FAB1 was the inspiration for the lolly’s name.
By the mid-70s, a period of long, hot summers meant ice lolly sales were hitting £1.5 million a week – remarkable for a product that was essentially water, flavouring, dye and sugar. It’s no wonder that the first survey of children’s dental health, in 1973, found that 97 per cent of 15-year-olds had tooth decay.
In those days very few foods published the nutritional content on their packaging and many revelled in including unusual ingredients. Simon says, ‘It was almost a badge of honour to have the most baffling ingredients in your product. Look at this! This is space age!’
Britain’s diets are better now, with the sugar and salt of most processed food considerably lower, and many additives banned. But there was something thrilling about spending your pocket money on a rocketshaped lolly, or tucking into a bowl of butterscotch Angel Delight. As Simon says, ‘At the time, we didn’t think it was anything other than an exciting new generation of food.’