Brexit’s hard to stomach

Why isn't this sold in sacks?

Despite news on Tuesday that the UK and EU have finally agreed on the draft text of an agreement about withdrawal, Brexit delivered a serious blow this week – right where it hurts.

With months of rumours about potential shortages – notably the worrying scenario of insufficient drug supplies – a far more terrifying threat to our very Britishness came to light this week. We could be staring down the barrel of a crippling thick liquid meal accompaniment shortage.

It seems things are looking grave for gravy, calamitous for custard and potentially crippling for Mr Kipling, as the famous brands’ owners, Premier Foods, have announced that they intend to stockpile raw materials ahead of Brexit.

Concerned that gridlock at the UK’s ports will mean customers screaming “Oh No!” instead of “Oxo”, they will soon start to stockpile the raw ingredients of their products, to the tune of up to £10m. In anybody’s books, that’s a hell of a lot of Bisto granules and packets of ‘exceedingly good’ cakes.

I know you’re looking forward to your weekend, but imagine for a moment the horror lurking in our immediate future if this doesn’t work. Sunday roast – a dry desert of meat and veg, lacking it’s rich brown oasis of gravy. And if both Kipling’s cakes and custard are absent, what’s for pudding? These are important questions that the government seems unable to answer.

Agreeing the draft wording on how we leave the EU suddenly seems pretty insignificant doesn’t it? We have far more serious issues now. Our very way of life is under threat.

Premier Foods say their plans are “purely a precautionary measure”, but I’m not taking any chances. I don’t want to be fighting my neighbours in the street for the last Bakewell slice post-Brexit. I’ll be barricading myself in the cellar with my pallet of ready-made tubs of deluxe custard, and making sure I know where my nearest cow is so that the Butterscotch Angel Delight supply doesn’t dry up.

You can fit a lot of cake into a freezer too, if you remove all the packaging. Those little foil trays can also be shaped to form a kind of protective armour for the impending Cup A Soup riots that will inevitably follow the Super Noodles shortages.

Oh, God no – When will this torment end?! I just discovered this list of endangered staples includes Paxo. That’s us well and truly stuffed, then.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 16th of November 2018. Honing in on one of the endangered products, they ran it on their website as "Oooh gravy, we love our gravy". I'd love to tell you about the print edition, but once again it appears to have gone AWOL, and I haven't received my copy for a couple of weeks.

If I had to describe a typical column for me, this would fit the bill nicely. Daft, taking a newsworthy story and coming at it from an obtuse angle, alliteration, plus my signature - something about people fighting in the street over a food item during the End Of Days. These come easy, thankfully.

(CD A-Z: It's Top Of The Pops '84 - skinny leather tie optional.)