NewsflareGary Lineker, your days as the nation’s favourite crisp muncher are numbered after this dog was papped chowing down on a stolen packet before giving a cheeky grin to the camera.
Has this pup been watching the greatest hits of Gary Lineker’s advertising career for a certain Leicestershire based crisp company?
Just how many times will the the word ‘crisps’ be uttered before I lose it and bury my head into a stack of the delicious potato snack?
So many questions, so little time. Anyone going to the shop? I’d kill for a packet of crisps.
Before you uppity Americans at the back start piping up not understanding the Queen’s tongue – and that’s an entirely different matter all together – by crisps I mean what you would call potato chips.
We’re not going through the Lee Dixon cigarettes fiasco of the other week when his English was lost on our transatlantic cousins.
But we must be careful after all, as George Bernard Shaw once opined: ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language’.
A lot’s changed since then, shapes of footballs is an example which first comes to mind, but obviously since whenever it was he said that line – probably somewhere between 1856 and 1950 – our standards of dentistry have improved.
We don’t all have gnashers like Austin Powers. The dog proves that in the video. Yeah baby!
NewsflareBack to the potato lecture at hand, crisp perfection is perfected a lot easier than you’d think.
All you’ve got to do is preheat your oven to 230 c (450 F) and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Peel and then chop three medium red potatoes into slices. Put the slices in boiling water for 3-5 minutes. Drain and then mix with salt and pepper and whatever spices you like. Whack the sliced spuds onto the sheet in one layer and cook for 15 minutes. Remove and let them cool for a couple of minutes. Eat.
Did you know chips in Britain is what Americans would call fries? Of course you do.
Oxford Dictionaries write:
The United States developed its own vocabulary for variations on fried potatoes. Americans had a penchant for thin chips, and recipes for slender, crisp-fried potato slices first appeared in 1824. By the mid-nineteenth century, fried potato slices were called potato chips or Saratoga chips, named for Saratoga Springs, a popular resort city in upstate New York, where they were popularized.
In the late nineteenth century, when deep-fried julienne potatoes (potatoes cut into thin strips) became popular in England, they were still called “chips,” “chip-potatoes” or “fried chip-potatoes.” To avoid confusion with the already popular potato chip, Americans used a variety of terms for these potato sticks—German fried potatoes, German fries, French fried potatoes, and French fries.
For those of you who’ve been walking around with nappies on when the September 11 attacks happened and the United States began its War on Terror and misjudged invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, of which we’re still feeling the repercussions, the following actually happened.
I wasn’t quite alive around the First World War, so I’ll put my trust in Oxford here.
They note:
When the United States entered World War I, the word “German” was expunged from many American phrases, and French fries became the favored term for thin potato sticks. Similarly and more recently, when the French refused to support the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, US Representative Robert W. Ney, the Chair of the House Administration Committee, ordered all references to “French fries” be expunged from the menus of the restaurants and snack bars run by the House of Representatives. French fries were duly renamed “Freedom Fries.” However, unlike “French fries,” the term “Freedom Fries” has never really caught on.
Newsflare
The dog, if anyone cares, comes from Shaftesbury, England, so he’s definitely calling them crisps and not chips. Check mate.
And I only mentioned the C-word eight times after all that.
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Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.