Prop Styling: Ellis Parrinder Hand Model: Sophie Fryer. Photograph: Ellis Parrinder/The Observer
In May, the UK government launched its “Prepare” emergency awareness campaign, ominously encouraging people to stock up on things such as bottled water, a wind-up radio and non-perishable foodstuffs. I’ve collected a few cans of soup but, more successfully, I’ve quietly been stockpiling the Co-op’s sea salt and chardonnay wine vinegar crisps (in the big bags), just in case. Like millions of British people, when I say I love crisps, I really mean it.
Crisps are the ideal survival product, sealed and salted, but a great packet can also function as a private restaurant where you dine alone, crisp by crisp, intensely scrutinising the crunch, flavour and execution, like a Michelin inspector of snacks. They are as transporting as they are comforting – and unsurprisingly, they had a good pandemic, with Britons buying £441m more bagged snacks in 2020 than they did in 2019. They even helped morale during the blitz. At Smith’s Crisps AGM in 1941, chairman Sir Herbert E Morgan noted that Londoners were taking the brand’s crisps down to air raid shelters: “As in times of peace our crisps have been a standby, and an always reliable friend – they are additionally so these days,” he told shareholders.
