The Secret World Of Crisps
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Viva Las Vegas. The casino city conjures images of Elvis in white leather and rhinestones.
What you don't think of immediately is a sales convention for crisp manufacturers.
But it was in Vegas at the Snaxpo exhibition (which showcases international snack food) in 1980 that Britain first encountered a tortilla chip.
This momentous discovery was made by two northern blokes who recalled their excitement in The Secret World Of Crisps (C4).
It's fitting that, while most Vegas double acts have exotic names such as Siegfried and Roy, or Penn and Teller, our lads were called Roger and Keith.
Roger McKechnie and Keith Gill launched an upmarket snack brand called Phileas Fogg
Roger McKechnie and 온라인카지노 (http://cleanbacara.com) Keith Gill were convinced the UK snack market was crying out for tortillas — baked triangles of mashed sweetcorn dipped in spicy cheese powder laced with preservatives. Yum . . .
Extensive research with the British public showed that nine out of ten people who expressed a preference didn't merely dislike tortillas.
They actively despised them.
But this was the beginning of the 1980s, when a whole sub-culture was booming in the South-East of England. Young people with German cars and jobs in the City were being dubbed 'yuppies'.
They had no taste and loadsamoney.
And they thought tortillas were great. Roger and Keith launched an upmarket snack brand, quickly adding garlic croutons and poppadoms to their range. They called it Phileas Fogg, after the chap who went Around The World In Eighty Days.
Their rivals were scathing.
At Walkers, former manager Martin Glenn sneered: 'It was posh crisps; it was for the middle classes on a Friday evening.' As we saw in the episode on duelling chocolatiers, competition is tough in the snack business, and the talk is tougher.
Roger talked about his old bosses at Smith's Crisps with contempt: 'Smith's were dead from the feet up.
Boring.'