Nessie, we need to talk, because you recommended this stuff to me. I tasted it this morning, and I am now forced to reconsider several things I previously believed about civilisation.
Wow Leg’ends,
This is M&S Custard Cream Spread: sweet, smooth vanilla spread with crunchy biscuit bits. That description is technically accurate in the same way that ‘the Atlantic is slightly damp’ is technically accurate. It gives you the general area while completely failing to communicate the seriousness of the situation.
You put the spoon in, taste it, and somewhere inside your brain the little committee responsible for adult judgement quietly packs up its papers and leaves the building.
A spread too ridiculous for words
It is absolutely ridiculous. This isn’t clever-food ridiculous, where somebody whispers ‘Madagascan vanilla’ while placing half a strawberry on a slate. This is proper ridiculous. Kitchen ridiculous. The sort where you suddenly realise you have been standing motionless for twenty seconds holding a teaspoon and the jar has somehow become the senior decision-maker in the room.
And then we come to the price.
£2.50.
£2.50 for a 400g jar.
I have paid more than that for a coffee served in a cup with the carrying capacity of a thimble while somebody behind the counter looked faintly disappointed in my milk choice. At £2.50, this does not feel like competitive pricing. It feels like a clerical oversight with a barcode.
What a bargain.
Breakfast has offered no protection
I had already eaten breakfast when I tried it, which should have offered some protection. There ought to be a system. Perhaps somebody from M&S Compliance should emerge from behind the fridge carrying a clipboard and say, ‘Sir, records indicate that breakfast has already occurred. Put down the spoon.’
Instead, you are left unsupervised with 400 grams of custard-cream temptation displaying roughly the moral restraint of a fruit machine in a motorway service station.
And the dangerous thing is that you do not actually need to put it on anything.
Obviously toast is going to work. Crumpets will surrender immediately. Pancakes have probably instructed solicitors, while waffles are examining whether this constitutes a hostile takeover.
But those are respectable serving suggestions. They exist to maintain the social fiction that this is an ordinary spread rather than a jar designed to make adults stand beside the kitchen sink eating directly from it while listening for approaching footsteps like a Labrador that has finally worked out how cupboards operate.
Once that line has been crossed, your brain starts surveying the kitchen for fresh victims. A croissant could become emotional. Ice cream has no realistic defence. Porridge deserves some happiness after everything it has been through, and a banana suddenly looks less like fruit and more like infrastructure.
Then, eventually, you reach the outer boundary of responsible civilisation.
Mashed potato.
And then someone mentioned mashed potato
Do I recommend putting Custard Cream Spread into mashed potato? No. I still have family and several of them know my address.
Do I believe the matter should be dismissed without proper scientific investigation? Absolutely not.
You cannot shut down an inquiry simply because Big Potato fears innovation. Somewhere between the Maris Piper and the teaspoon lies either a culinary atrocity or a breakthrough capable of making Heston Blumenthal stare silently at a saucepan and wonder why he wasted all that time on snail porridge.
This is how research happens.
Admittedly, most research has an ethics committee. Mine appears to have gone home.
Britain’s greatest policy achievement
And perhaps this is the most humiliating thing about the product. Britain spends enormous amounts of time explaining why simple things cannot possibly be simple. A public service needs a transformation programme. A council form somehow becomes a portal. Before long there is a dashboard glowing confidently in an office while somebody outside is still trying to work out why the bloody thing will not accept their postcode.
M&S, meanwhile, appears to have approached one of the foundational questions of British civilisation with considerably greater clarity.
Take custard cream.
Make spread.
Put spread in jar.
Actually, no. Look at that. We nearly wandered back into a rule of three.
They put the biscuit in a bloody jar and charged £2.50 for it.
There. That’s the policy.
And it works without asking you to create an account, scan a QR code, download an app or remember a password containing a capital letter and the crushed remains of your self-respect.
This country can deliver. Apparently we just needed to stop trying to digitise the council for five minutes and concentrate on liquefying biscuits.
The Dutch have perfected the experiment
There is another magnificent detail: it is made in the Netherlands. So Britain appears to have outsourced the final evolutionary stage of one of its most sacred biscuits to the Dutch, who took one look at the custard cream and thought, quite reasonably, ‘Why are you people still chewing this?’
I am aware that I am becoming emotional now, and that is troubling.
I had breakfast and was, until quite recently, a functioning citizen with plans. Now I am wondering whether this stuff has structural applications.
Could it grout a bathroom?
No.
Probably.
Stop it!
This is what happens when confectionery development is allowed to operate without meaningful parliamentary oversight.
Somewhere, somebody sat in a product meeting and suggested turning a custard cream into spread. Instead of being escorted from the premises, they were apparently allowed to continue.
I hope that person is doing well.
Give them a modest plaque.
Nothing enormous. We do not want confidence getting out of hand and risk suddenly waking up to Bourbon Biscuit Mayonnaise.
Nobody asked us to write this
Although now I’ve written that down, somebody in product development has just looked up from a laptop.
Before this gets any more evangelical, an important disclosure:
M&S have not paid us to say any of this, and this post is not sponsored.
We have received no mysterious hamper. Nobody has quietly pushed an envelope across the table. There is certainly no Marks & Spencer executive standing just outside shot mouthing, ‘Mention the crunchy bits again.’
The crunchy bits require no lobbying.
This exists because Nessie told me to try the stuff, I tried it, and my critical faculties briefly wandered off without leaving a forwarding address.
However, should somebody at M&S read this and conclude that SPN possesses precisely the sort of reckless custard-cream advocacy their future marketing strategy has been lacking, we are adults. We can have a conversation.
Money would be perfectly acceptable.
So would Custard Cream Spread.
If a forklift became involved, I would endeavour to remain professionally detached.
Independent journalism has overheads
I am not saying independent journalism can be bought. I am saying independent journalism has overheads, and some of those overheads may now need to be stored in a cupboard away from direct sunlight.
Until the confectionery-industrial complex recognises our obvious commercial value, there is a Buy Me a Coffee link below. That supports Bylines Network, not M&S. You can also subscribe if you fancy helping us continue our vital investigations into democracy, media nonsense, public power and whether mashed potato is psychologically prepared for vanilla biscuit spread.
Independent journalism costs money. Fortunately, spoons remain affordable.
So there we are. M&S Custard Cream Spread, 400g for £2.50. No sponsorship involved. Completely unnecessary and absolutely bloody magnificent.
Nessie, you absolute menace. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.
Now somebody hide the jar.
This article was adapted from a Substack post. You can follow Willy & Bill on Substack here.
Bylines Network Gazette is out!
The latest Bylines Network Gazette is out now. Become a Friend of Bylines Network or upgrade to a paid Substack subscription, and you will get access to a vital collection of citizen articles and stories.
Journalism by the people, for the people.
