Although introduced into the UK in 1957, flavoured crisps only became popular a decade later.

I remember when, to paraphrase Henry Ford, “you can have any flavour you like as long as it’s ready salted”. 

Unscrewing the tiny blue bag of salt was often painful if you’d a paper cut you weren’t aware of and suddenly had what felt like a cat o’ nine tails over your hand.

Golden Wonder introduced smokey bacon, which was quickly rivalled by Smith’s gammon flavoured crisps.  When I first saw this, I assumed that, rather than a small bag of salt inside, there’d be a slice of pineapple or a fried egg instead.

Very soon the world’s food ingredients would be found inside one solitary crisp packet:

I could be inside my Balham flat and allow Chipitos to culinarily transport me to Mexico; Monster Munch to Transylvania and anything containing prawn cocktail to a sophisticated restaurant in the West End.  Well, this was the seventies 😊

But having prawn cocktail and steak & onion crisps was almost like having a proper meal; I’m surprised they’ve never introduced Black Forest Gateau flavour to literally cater for all three courses.

But, for me, the worst thing was Tudor Crisps’ pickled onion flavour.  They’d blow your head off – ironically, something not uncommon in Tudor times.