Sunday 11 September 2011

HP RIP

Real life intrudes, and I am in the unpleasant parts of book completion. The downside of opting for self-publishing the short stories is that nobody's designing covers, editing or adding the fiddly bits for me. I won't be doing this with full novels. It would drive me nuts!

Still, I had to comment on the demise of HP Sauce, which has fallen to the Health Nazi demands for desalination. Even though it's just a sauce and not a meal. I will treasure my last bottle here because there will be no more of it. Here, by way of an epitaph, is Marty Feldman's tribute to a once-great sauce.



Since the company is no longer interested in the original secret recipe, perhaps they'd be willing to publish it online somewhere? It won't affect sales because they aren't using that recipe and there are those of us who won't buy their new messed-up sauce anyway.

Oh, and the reason? To save the NHS money, of course. Well, the antismokers will be delighted, since saving the NHS money is their main reason for existing. Therefore all antismokers must fully support this, surely?

Back to work for me. I think I'll break for a bacon sandwich later, with some of my remaining HP sauce.

This looks like Cameron's 'Free School Milk' moment to me.

30 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh F*** F***, F***! When will these health fanatics stop interfering with that that we love and had the freedom to choose to love? And the fact that they reduced the salt in minimum amounts but still managed to turn a great tasting sauce into some sort of dog poo is not lost on me.

It was telling that: the brown sauce which famously bears a picture of the Houses of Parliament on the label has been secretly altered at the request of Government health chiefs.

Please tell me that I am not a 'conspiricy theorist' when I think that our great unwashed in parliament are a bunch of F***ing control freaks!!!

Unknown said...

Forgot to say what a great find in Marty Feldman, who remembers him? I do.

That clip fitted in so well to your blog post, great find that filled me with nostalgia.

Bill Sikes' Dog said...

So , the efficacy of HP Sauce has been drastically reduced .

Oh , the irony .

Bandit 1 said...

Prefer Daddies myself. Though I imagine that this too will be messed with as it is also owned by Heinz (and it also exists in this world of 'health' nazis).

Such a waste of time, energy and money, all this micro-managing crap. Martians would never understand. "So you're saying that some people work at actual jobs and have money taken from them in order to pay people with phoney-baloney jobs to interfere in their lives? Oh-kay..."

Anonymous said...

If they've just removed the salt why can't we just mix some extra salt back in and maybe an extra extra bit of salt just for good measure?
Z
World gone truly mad.

Anonymous said...

"Heinz made the changes after signing up to the Coalition Government's Responsibility Deal, a programme of targets for reducing the level of fats and salts used by food manufacturers. The key pledges include an agreement to reducing salt in food so people eat 1g less per day by end of 2012."


Christ, people are losing their jobs and homes and this is what they're spending their time and our money on.


"Health experts claim this measure will save the NHS £46 million a year within three years and prevent more than 4,000 premature deaths a year."

Doesn't that sound sooo familiar?


"But as a result of the decrease in salt in the old sauce, the new line has more calories and carbohydrates. The new version also has less fibre, an essential part of a balanced daily diet."

Hahahahaha


Jay

Unknown said...

@anonimouse at 12:31 are you taking the piss? I love my salt and put it on everything that | eat but...and this is the kicker...even the anti 'ban salt in our foods' arsholes may agree...it is my fuking choice and, believe it or not, if it is two salty I'll feel sick as a fookin' dog. Same with sugar, I used to like it with two spoonfools in my tea until the wife got me onto one spoonful and now if I take two spoonsful I'll baulk, still drink it, but baulk.

Am I superfluous here in the world of bansterbatory?

WTF is going on in my name???

guinessman said...

I bought a bottle of HP 'Guinness ' Sauce the other week. I love guinness and I loved HP sauce so it had to be brilliant didn't it.
Fuckin disgustin. Threw out the rest of the bottle. Unlike me lol. How it managed to get past a taste test baffles me.

sixtypoundsaweekcleaner said...

I think it's time we started making our own. Jamie Oliver has a nice recipe.

ms penelope prickstop (100 percent cosmetic) said...

oh my, isn't the world perilous enough without uncertified chefs of no-fixed-creativity messing around with our grub? well, i do believe that thebigyin has more or less hit the mark...you see, i could tell you a tale which would curl your flailing false-eyelashes...yesseree, it was actually stick d'arseturdly who stole the secret hp sauce recipe and, if what i hear is true, it was her imaginatively-challenged little bitch buttlea who watered the oh so too piquant product down with its own 'secret ingredient', then passed off vast quantities of 'plan b' relish as the real mccoy - and so by flooding the market ended-up undermining the both the price and the spice. of course, now there's writs and warrants flying in all directions - for counterfeiting, fraud, theft, not to mention untold compenastion claims for damages to businesses which unwittingly used the impure product in the manufacture of its own meals and suffered a subsequent loss of sales due to the unsavoury taste left in the mouth by the contaminated condiment. indeed, i truly do hope to learn that the perpetrators get banged-up for their miserable miscreance...and that reminds me of something...

for truthfully, although i nowadays simply suffice with the plain-brown lidl basic brand, i can never forget, back in the good old days, the time when i first experienced the taste of real hp as conveyed to my lips compliments of double bratwurst and a whole bunch of fried tomatos...i think it was in the back-room of a greasy spoon motorway cafe just off the m2 motorway somewhere near sittingbourne, or was it faversham? anyway, a consumate gastronomic experience, if a bit sparse on the plate, never to be repeated or even dimly reflected in the refectories of modern times...save i do recall the coffee being a bit on the strong side...some blasted expresso machine-operator was to blame, apparently...and...to cut a long-story short...i got such a rush of caffeine, on my under-nourished belly, that i had to take the choo-choo home. funny, i sometimes wonder whether i just imagined that hp sauce back on that dim, distant and dismal day. i dunno, in my book the stuff has more mythical powers, derived from cue comparison to current-day urbanity, than any true culinary cutting-edge.

oh dear, forgot to cross the 't' said...

17:10

'cute comparison'

old ma bubble-and-squeak said...

16:16

don't use swear-words like that in my presence, luvvy - j*m** ******* *l*v*r is nix but a new labour tart who, since selling-out to the new weird order, would be lucky to rustle-up an audience even if he presented a live-tv demonstration of how to eat his own bollocks croquetted.

(ps: i'm using cockney rhyming-slang in order to preserve my anonymity, get it?)

the resouding onomatopoeic fart of sound poetry said...

10:34

It was telling that: the brown sauce which famously bears a picture of the Houses of Parliament on the label has been secretly altered at the request of Government health chiefs.

Please tell me that I am not a 'conspiricy theorist' when I think that our great unwashed in parliament are a bunch of F***ing control freaks!!!


i hear you loud and clear, but must take issue with your final conclusion - i have it on good authority that the new hp sauce label will carry a dadaist depiction of a handbag full of spanners.

gordon vindaloo-gob said...

17:36

old ma, i'm utterly disgusted by your bad taste in cookery, and i note that you omitted to mention the sauce which would accompany the rather minimalist hors d'oeuvre. nul points, granny. as a recipe for revenge, you are concocting something way too over-blown - simply let him toss-up one of his favourite socialist show-pieces carefully seasoned and prepared au façon d'une old maid's anally retentive anorak, then drown it fatally in hp sauce, and finally force the arse-licking little leftie cunt to tuck in and clean-up the plate proper after - and for desert you could always serve him what, between us cordon-bleu chefs, is commonly known as a 'smack in the chops'...i can't go into the finer details of that particular delicacy here, but you can take it from me that, due to the ingredients being terribly costly and the recipe involving unbearably complex and convoluted cuisine, it's a course which only a head-chef with many years of hard experience behind him can even attempt...basically it's subtle galley humour for the discerning gourmand, you probably wouldn't appreciate the finer feisty flavours, you twisted old bag.

ps: my old grandad used to swear by hp sauce.

frisson flambé said...

19:04

funny you should mention young jammy gulliver - one of his sus-chefs used to live opposite me on the corner and had a perverse predilection for snooping out my favourite creations and then feeding them to his dog for dinner.

Slamlander said...

What very few people know is that HP Sauce is the same as A1 Steaksauce in the States. I wonder if they changes A1 Steaksauce as well?

In certain parts of the States, that'd be grounds for a lynching. In other parts, simple perforation with copper clad lead pellets would do. In Louisianna, the Cajuns would simply feed them to the gators.

On the other hand, if they hadn't then this is a business opportunity.

Dioclese said...

Never liked the bloody stuff myself...

Now...Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup is another story. Strange how the organic stuff tastes exactly like the original stuff did when I were a lad!

Anonymous said...

I ceased even looking at a bottle of HP when Heinz bought the sauce - similarly for Lea & Perrins. Heinz gave a hint of their ideas of regional sauces when they moved the manufacturing of Worcestershire sauce to Birmingham. Luckily, that fell flat, and they moved back.

I ceased buying ALL Heinz products when they shut the Brum factory, and moved over to Holland (perhaps in a fit of pique re Lea & Perrins?).

Similarly, I no longer buy any Cadbury's (all now made in Poland); maybe it is just pissing in the wind, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am making SOME effort at not contributing to our destruction.

RSP

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! You made Number 3 on the Total Politics Top 50 non-aligned bloggers! Very well deserved :D

deeply disgusted of nether winchendon said...

23:06

looks like leg-iron hasn't been growing tobacco plants after all - he's obviously been busy nobbing his way to the top of a very eclectic pile of horse-dung. a real blogger doesn't go anywhere near an establishment approved function, let alone accept an award. what a disgrace - i shall never read this blog again...although i may occasionally comment on it.

eco-worrier said...

23:06

at last, the results are in - i've haven't slept for a month what with all exhausting expectation over who's going to be in the top 50 green bloggers. thank you for the link - i must have been doing something unforgivably inconsequential at the time and missed the story when it broke on the six o'clock news. fantastic, i can now look forward to getting a really great night's sleep.

old blohorn (unhinged, unfriendly blogger defending the right to have children as an insurance policy against old age) said...

23:06

it's a shameless and blatant fix, i demand a recount.

sauce bruni said...

12:31

there's a brewing process involved, you can't just unbake a cake, the salt has to be in there at the beginning or it doesn't have the opportunity to exert a catalytic influence on the mystical chemical reaction integral to formulating the tangy factor in genuine hp. trust me, i'm a stirrer.

put the salt in after? sounds like the kind of slack sleazy stunt the frogs would pull.

monseigneur sarkozy - first admiral of the gravy-boat said...

en be'arfs of ze peeples and ze cuisinerie francaise i takes grosse objections to your fouled insinuation and affronteries. i can affirms before ze whole worlds zat carla makes greats 'ome-brewered sauces and sose do i, oftens we evens gets togezza and makes a common sauces which taste very distinquishables. carla iz on ze 'abit of supplying ze salty residews and i likes to doos ze stirrings wiz mon special littles stirring-sticky. ze pasty vich extrudes iz a verisable triomphe of ze euro-collaborations of mixings-ze-nations dishes ontop of one-an-ze-ozza and en fait carla is even bakings ones of our latest efforts ins 'er 'ot little ovens as vee speaks,todays, and she is assurings me zat it wills be prepared to pops out in ze full views of ze republiques rights en advance of ze presidency's electioneerings. a formidables reproductions of ze corpurations romano-francaises. buzzer offs vous tastyless twat anglaise. letz zem slurps ze british bisto. vive la sauce sarkozy-bruni.

Dr Evil said...

I'll be migrating to daddies brown or Crosse and Blackwell. I liked HP sauce but they mess with the recipe at their peril. It will die as a brand if the taste test results I saw over the weekend are factual.

Anonymous said...

I have a bottle of HP (bought about a month ago) and couldn't for the life of me work out whether my butcher had changed his sausage meat or my taste buds had taken a turn for the worse.

Now I read the DM article, and check the ingredients list on the HP and discover that it's the 1.3g salt product. No I know why it makes my fry up taste so nasty.

How the cheeky fuckers get away with not being required to tell you on the packaging that the recipe has changed I don't know.

I need to find a supplier of Chef Sauce in the UK, to date I have only seen it in the Republic of Ireland.

violent and vulgar variety is the price of a free-lunch said...

12:39

perhaps the workers at hp are deliberately sabotaging their own sauce in protest at the mob who have taken over the company and have introduced intolerable new working practices which repress the creative cook-craft required to keep the brand-taste fresh and challenging - the shop-floor staff probably realize that the label is going down the pan anyway and have nothing to lose. it's even been alleged that traditional tools and machines have been jammed-up with superglue by management in order to force the veteran workers to use foreign-sourced food-processors which operate less efficiently - thus slowing down the production-line.

as for 'the secret formula', it's common knowledge that there never was one - the 'formula' has always been to throw into the pot any shit which came to hand and then bottle the results for nationwide consumption, regardless of quality - very much in the great british tradition of the houses of parliament themselves. the implementation of modern methods of recipe-rationalization, micro-controlling of measures, and surveillance of the previously secret inner-sanctum sessions of the society of sacred soup-makers-and-stirrers have all caused a bitter grass-roots backlash, together with some rather nasty incidents between house-placemen and practioners of indigenous brewing-customs. such is the threat of invasive cultural contamination from abroad that i fear the distribution of genuine ethnic hp will be pushed underground with the tragic consequence that high-grade sauce will henceforth be manufactured in completely unregulated backhouses and kitchens for consumption in illegal grub-dens.

turkey-twizzler liberation front said...

hail,

old ma bubble 17:36
gordon v-gob 19:04
violent and vulgar lunch 0:03

we are with you brothers (and auntie)

count vernacular said...

00:03

para 2, line 3

'any old shit' is the usual phrase i think you'll find.

17:36

en croquette rather than 'croquetted', if you please.

old ma cleanspeak said...

00:28

good evening my dear count,

rather than 'if you please', how about: up your r'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaassss?

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