Stuff Brits Like

by Fraser McAlpine

  Some drinks were originally sold as tonics or pick-me-ups before they made the jump to general consumption. Certainly Lucozade—so named because it is riddled with glucose and is fizzy—was once marketed as the sort of drink one might deliver to a relative in hospital. It even came wrapped in a translucent orange plastic sheet, to facilitate the idea that it needed to be kept sterile before serving. Now it is marketed exclusively as a sports drink, for athletes who need a sugar rush immediately after, before and during exercise. In this respect Luco-zade has become the energy drink that (possibly) won’t give joggers heart palpitations or gastric trouble. Mmm! Refreshing!

  Then there are the drinks that, by blending or other means, managed to depart from conventional fruit flavours into another realm entirely. One that is quite hard to define by taste alone, and their names do not help matters.

  Take Vimto, a name suggestive of vitamins and sunshine combined. It began as a cordial, like the eternally popular blackcurrant Ribena, and is still widely available in both fizzy and ready-to-dilute form (as well as ice lollies, sweets and even on draft in some pubs), and if it were widely known that it is supposed to be a mixture of grapes, raspberries and blackcurrants (with a few extra herbal bits and bobs thrown in to keep things mysterious), maybe it would be less of an enigma. As it is, the key fact any schoolchild knows about Vimto is that the name is an anagram of vomit. A most unjust state of affairs, given that the drink is so popular that some travelling rock stars—like Eddie Argos of the band Art Brut—take a supply on tour, as a reliable taste of home.

  Another form of patriotic fervour comes from rusty Irn-Bru, which basks under the glorious advertising slogan “Made in Scotland from Girders”. It is the most popular soft drink in Scotland, effortlessly outselling such giants as Coke and Dr Pepper, and commonly referred to as Scotland’s second favourite drink (after whisky). Its efficaciousness as a hangover cure is just one of the many reasons for this incredible popularity. Bright orange in hue, but not remotely orange in flavour, Irn-Bru has a taste that is entirely its own, being a soft drink equivalent of licking a battery (only, y’know, nice).

  Brits who came of age in the 1970s and earlier will have fond memories of taking the reusable glass pop bottles back to the shop in which they were bought and claiming five pence or ten pence back. It’s a reassuring nod to this pre-recycling past to note that across Scotland, A. G. Barr, the manufacturer of Irn-Bru—as well as cream soda and a variety of other beverages—has kept this tradition going.

  Barr is also responsible for making Tizer, which is bright red and has a taste that is equally hard to define. It’s sort of sweet and medicinal, the kind of taste you’d expect from a herbal extract that claims to cure indigestion in four hours. And in fact its name derives from the word appetizer, under which it was originally marketed. Definitely one to add to your fizzy pop tick list.

  You are making a fizzy pop tick list, aren’t you?

  WHAT TO SAY: “Two D&Bs and a Vimto chaser, straight, no ice.”

  WHAT NOT TO SAY: “Haven’t you got any Mountain Dew?”

  Tribute Bands

  For all that the British feel intimately connected with the pop and rock explosion of the past fifty years or so, they nonetheless have a niggling suspicion that the real action is always taking place somewhere else. And often that somewhere is America. While any touring global superstar would be foolish to overlook a couple of dates in Britain, even London is not so spoiled for choice that music fans can afford to just sit back and wait for the big gigs to happen, and there are always punters who require entertainment when Bruce or Beyoncé is otherwise engaged, or too expensive. This need is only increased when the singer, rapper or group in question is no longer available for any kind of performance.

  Enter the tribute artist, a chance to show off on three simultaneous levels at once: dressing up, naming the act and the performance itself.

  Dressing up is a key aspect. Whether it’s Elvis or the Beatles or the Spice Girls, you want to create the idea that this is an alternate version of reality, one in which the real Elvis neither died nor continued to thrive, but somehow lost his fortune and the bulk of his fan base and ended up doing gigs in local pubs around Britain for the cost of a hotel, a meal and the petrol to get to the next one. His movements, his look, his Elvis-ness, have to be in some sense intact, albeit slightly lost in translation thanks to the physical limitations of his alter ego: a podgy plumber from Barnsley called Neil.

  But that’s part of the fun too. If drama is all about the willing suspension of disbelief, tribute acts are Shakespearean in scale and emotional heft. It doesn’t matter if you’re not the right age for the star you’re attempting to be; it doesn’t even matter if you’re not the same gender or the same race (actually, the race thing matters a lot, but only in one direction; even with that willing suspension, blacking-up is still blacking-up). All you need to do is stand on a stage and say, in a firm voice, “I am Elvis”, and the powers of Elvis shall be yours.

  So the performance becomes about commonly understood mannerisms. More Elvis tribute acts appear in white rhinestone jumpsuits than any other costume, because that’s the Elvis most people know. Beatle tribute bands without collarless jackets and 1963 moptops (or fluorescent Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band army uniforms) are not going to get repeat bookings. And if they don’t bother to talk to each other in exaggerated Liverpool accents between numbers, that’s weird too. Not as weird as using the wrong guitars, but still unsettling.

  But the real creativity in being a tribute act—and this is something the British are particularly fond of—lies in creating a name that somehow refers to the original performers, while making it clear that this is not them, and wrapping the whole thing up in a clever pun. The Bootleg Beatles, the Australian Doors—these are good descriptive names for a handbill or a poster, but they’re not funny. Not like:

  Elvish Presley, Not the Hoople, Blackest Sabbath, Antarctic Monkeys, Forged Harrison, Oasish, Motorheadache, Surely Bassey, the Police Academy, the Fillers, the Counterfeit Stones . . .

  And that really is the tip of the iceberg. Such a list could easily be entirely populated with Beatles tribute bands alone.

  So while people need to see those songs performed in a live situation, while people enjoy reliving their wild youth (or imagining they are at the Cavern Club in ‘62), the tribute act takes what was once an expression of individuality, youth and charisma and makes it a parade of vaudeville fun, pitched somewhere between a reminder of days gone by and a resurrection of something the audience is too young to have seen the first time around. What you lose in danger and spontaneity you win in verisimilitude and shared nostalgia.

  There are even tribute band festivals, for which the tickets are far cheaper and the lineups beyond your wildest imaginings. And of course the festivals are as susceptible to punning names as the bands themselves, the most notable being the perfectly titled Glastonbudget.

  WHAT TO SAY: “I’ve always wanted to see Nirvana live and now I can!”

  WHAT NOT TO SAY: “Of course, the real Paul is left-handed . . .”

  The Boat Race

  As a title for a sporting event, it’s hard to top “The Boat Race”. Every word is key. It’s a race, between boats, and it is the definite article. All other boat races, even the big ones between sailing boats that go, y’know, all the way to over there and back again, they pale to alabaster nothing next to The Boat Race. You never hear sports journalists or TV presenters discussing a fixture called “The Football Match” or “The Running Race”, do you? That’s because there are too many examples with a claim to being definitive. Even Wimbledon, which has some claim—from a British perspective, at least—to be “The Tennis Tournament”, is bereft of that lofty title.

  The Boat Race is also one of the few notable British sporting events in which all the participants are students. There are a lot of inter-university sports, of course, but nothing that permeates the wider consciousness; and none of these participa
nts got a place at college based on their ability as athletes. But there appears to be something magically enticing about an annual grudge match between two eight-person rowing teams—representing the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club—on a bendy stretch of the River Thames in London. This is an annually televised event that reaches millions of homes, which is more than can be said for almost any other student activity that is not a news story about exam results featuring photogenic female students jumping up and down and/or crying.

  While The Boat Race was first held in 1829, it wasn’t until 1854 (practically last week by British historical standards) that it became an annual event, taking place on either the final weekend of March or the first weekend in April. And make no mistake, the Brits who are partial to this kind of thing take it incredibly seriously. Only outbreaks of world war have interrupted the racing, and when disruptions have occurred—a couple of sinkings, broken oars, two pre-race mutinies, and a protester interrupting the race in 2012—the drama is given the reverence and scrutiny one might expect of a troubling murder trial. After a particularly fractious time preparing for The Boat Race in 1987, the Oxford team faced an ultimatum from American oarsmen who refused to take part if a fellow countryman who had been cut was not reinstated. The team that entered, patched up from the reserve team, went on to win. It is a measure of how seriously some Brits take this stuff that there have been two books written (and published) about the events leading up to that one race.

  The match is rich in traditions. In stark contrast with most team games, both teams wear the same colour—blue—it’s just that the blue of the Cambridge blues is a lighter shade of blue than the blue of the Oxford blues. While the race itself is quite short, it’s the kind of sporting event that encourages spectators to make a day of it, and as it’s by the river, there are no shortage of picturesque pubs into which fans can cram, lingering before and after, and after again. On that note, critics sometimes complain that The Boat Race is little more than a posh picnic for the upper classes, an impression that is in no way dispelled by the fact that the teams pick which side of the river to row on by tossing an 1829 gold sovereign. A fifty-pence piece would simply never do.

  Oh, and the tradition of lobbing the winning team’s coxswain into the river is pure beefy public school high jinks, akin to Formula 1 winners spraying champagne everywhere. It’s just a bit of fun, old thing, why the sour puss?

  The most interesting thing about The Boat Race, however, is that in all that time, the results between the teams have been remarkably even. At the time of writing, Cambridge currently has the edge over Oxford, but only by a couple of wins (the time in 1877 when a tie was declared does not count). There have been wider margins of success between the two teams down the years—Cambridge won thirteen years in a row, in the 1920s and ‘30s—but this period of balance serves a useful purpose, in that it means outsiders can’t go wrong by just picking a side they fancy and supporting them. Knowledge of boats, past form and rowing is no barrier to enjoying the full majesty of the event, or the lack thereof; it is, after all, only a boat race.

  WHAT TO SAY: “Isn’t boat race Cockney rhyming slang for ‘face’?”

  WHAT NOT TO SAY: “Come on, you blues!”

  Crisps and Other Deep-Fried Foods

  One of the international legends of British cuisine states that the Brits, particularly those in the north and in Scotland, have only two methods of cooking, and both involve boiling liquid: water or oil. That’s nonsense, but there’s just enough evidence for the prosecution to keep the jokes coming, especially when it comes to deep-fried foodstuffs. Even if you take fish and chips out of the equation (and you would be wise not to even attempt such a thing), you’ve still got a world of oily boiled joy to explore.

  Let’s start with crisps. We all love a crisp, don’t we? Although, as with all things, the Brits have managed to inject a note of class consciousness into their appreciation of them. By which I mean, depending on the situation, some flavours and brands are more welcome than others.

  So while the full range of Walkers crisps, from salt & vinegar to cheese & onion (see: Ampersand Foods), would be suitable to serve to any guest, beggar or prince—although possibly not prawn cocktail; it’s tacky—the cheap corn-puffed Space Raiders would be unwelcome in any social situation beyond a child’s birthday party (and even then it depends on the child). The far plusher Kettle Chips, on the other hand, are wasted on children, party or not, and don’t even bother to open the oven-roasted root vegetable mix, because they’ll be too busy scoffing party ring biscuits to care.

  You can even cut this down to individual flavours within the same range, with smoky bacon and tomato ketchup crisps being notably more plebeian than any sour cream and chive or Worcestershire sauce options, with pickled onion being the lowest of the low. Having said that, one snack is even further down the food chain—it should come with a public health warning—and that is Smiths Scampi Fries. You know how the scent of certain snack foods tends to linger on your fingers? Imagine if that scent wasn’t something relatively wholesome like cheese or vinegar, but fish. Dirty, dirty fish. After eating a pack of Scampi Fries, it’s not uncommon to find yourself locked in the bathroom for hours, methodically trying to scrub that fishy whiff off your digital extremities and vowing never to go near them again. Not a snack to put out if the queen visits, that’s my point.

  Then there are Skips, a tapioca approximation of a prawn cracker, in the shape of a buttercup. These delicately flavoured snacks rather fancy themselves as a cut above the average roast-beef-flavoured Monster Munch and are probably terribly embarrassed by their gaudy yellow packaging. There again, Twiglets—knobbly wheat sticks that taste of Marmite—are simply too down-to-earth to care. And compared to almost all other savoury treats, they’re practically health food.

  Of course, with all these snacks attempting to re-create or improve upon the chip shop experience in a convenient and portable way, the chip shops themselves have had to fight back by bunging newer and more interesting things into their hot fat to see what comes out. Scotland received international acclaim by inventing and popularizing the deep-fried Mars bar, having already been battering haggis and black pudding and white pudding for years. The Scots then went on to innovate further with deep-fried Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Now even Nigella Lawson has published a recipe in which she takes a beloved high street chocolate bar (in her case it’s a Bounty) and gives it a damn good frying, and she’s not even Scottish.

  This fondness for frying that which should never be fried has saddled Scottish cuisine with an international joke reputation that everyone seems perfectly happy to play along with. Take an egg, wrap it in a ball of sausage meat, coat the ball in breadcrumbs and deep-fry it, and it’s called a what? A Scotch egg. Take a circle of batter and whack that in the fryer, then sugar it and frost it, or inject it with jam, and what’s that called? It’s called a doughnut. Everyone has those.

  In fact, that deep-fried Mars bar was conceived as a one-off gimmick by one chippy in Aberdeen: the Haven Chip Bar, in Stonehaven. The only reason we know about it is because the local press marvelled at such gastronomic gall, and the story spread. Other chip shops simply followed suit, because it would improve business, and now this joke thing is a real thing; the greasy genie has slithered out of the bottle and the hunt is on for the next battery masterpiece.

  Deep-fried pizza has already happened, as have fritters of all descriptions—from banana to mushy pea to spam. But there’s still scope for a few late additions. How about a deep-fried lettuce? Or deep-fried After Eight mints? Who would like to try deep-fried hummus? Or perhaps a deep-fried ice sculpture of the Proclaimers?

  Mind you, a bit of batter around those Scampi Fries would definitely help.

  WHAT TO SAY: “Maybe we should just get a salad.”

  WHAT NOT TO SAY: “And where can I get hold of this human-breast-milk ice cream I keep hearing about?”

  The Cheese Map of Britain

&nb
sp; Since time immemorial, there has been a foolproof way to give directions in the British Isles. Long before GPS, before Google Maps, before properly signposted roads and the satisfying solidity of tarmac underfoot, should someone wish to know the way to a place, the clearest directions are always by pub.

  “Take a right at the White Hart. That’ll lead you down Tickley Road toward the Queen’s Head. Once you get there, you want the third left, just before you get to the Red Lion. Follow Touchstone Avenue for two miles until you reach the Old Cock and look for a dead tree on your right. Directly opposite is a one-lane track—Squeezeguts Lane—that will take you all the way to the main road. It comes out in the car park of the Coach and Horses, so watch how fast you take that corner. Turn left as you come out, follow the road for a mile, past the Open Season, and your friend’s house is sixteenth on the right.”

  But if you have farther to go, if you’re covering some serious distance, you’re going to need a larger scale to your map. Never mind pubs, never mind motorways, cheese is the only way to travel. Leave your A-Z behind; these curds will show the whey.

  According to the British Cheese Board (and please, can we have a moment of reflection and applause here for the governing body for British cheese having the wit to call themselves that? “Would you like to see the British Cheese Board, sir?” “No, thanks, I’ll just have coffee”), over seven hundred British cheeses are registered and produced in the UK and a good portion of them are named after the place from whence they came. You’ll already be aware of Cheddar, no doubt, and Stilton, Gloucester (double or single), Leicester and possibly Cheshire. But as a collection, these are only the thin end of the cheese map wedge.