Product Placement Friday #8: Twiglets

Look, everyone: George is back to give me another day off! And he's brought Twiglets!

Take it away, George...

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, my parents would sometimes have parties (NO, that those kind of parties!), and sometimes my brother and I would be dragged along to their friends’ houses for similar gatherings. Typical party food: vol-au-vonts, sausages and pineapple on cocktail sticks (not the entire pineapple), Silverskin onions (on a cocktail stick, sometimes with pineapple, and not Silvikrin onions, such a thing would be beyond disgusting), and savoury snacks in a kind of multi-pack, sections with peanuts, cheese puffs, those little stick potato crisp things, and Twiglets. No sane child liked or would admit to liking Twiglets in those far off days, (my brother and I certainly hated them, and we were very sane), that peculiar snacky thing of hardened flour twisted into what could pass for a small twig (maybe 6cm long) coated in Marmite.  I don’t suppose Twiglets are actually hardened flour coated in Marmite, and it’s simple to find out just what they are, but where’s the fun in that? Those days of pointless arguments about trivial issues such as this are gone, thanks to the Bloody Internet. (When I was drinking with Charity Chic and two other friends in Dundee a few weeks ago we had a ridiculous few moments trying to remember where the 2018 World Cup was held, which in those far off days before the Bloody Internet could have gone on for at least 20 minutes but was cut short by (a) one of us actually remembering, and (b) at the same time Euan looking it up on his phone).

But it is thanks to the Bloody Internet that I have found a few songs that mention that Marmite-coated snack, a snack that I actually like now...

First up, here’s Lady Sovereign...

Push me, push me up against that fridger... I ain't frigid I'm just expressin' myself as one really hungry midget Crack open them Twiglets so we can munch them like piglets Lady Sovereign - Food Play And next, Justin Bieber. Almost. Bieber eating a Twiglet Bieber eating a Twiglet Bieber eating a Twiglet On a talk show eating a Twiglet Not the most profound lyric, I’ll admit. Parry Gripp - Bieber Eating A Twiglet Third choice is a genuinely belting song, by Thomas Dolby, the Blinded Him With Science bloke, but this track I would file under Americana: Tank up on Dr. Pepper Twiglets and Jaffa Cakes Long trail of sweet wrappers Swirling in our wake I found one more track, by the Amateur Transplants called Swearytale of New York, which you can find on Spotify, but for some reason I could not play it. It’s probably a twee load of old bobbins anyway. Unlike that Thomas Dolby track.

And I like Marmite now as well as Twiglets, although they don’t sell it in the supermarkets here.

Thanks, as ever, George, for giving me another day off. And look... I found that Amateur Transplants track for you. It's anything but twee... there's a clue in the title.

The Amateur Transplants - Swearytale of New York