Mail Inflates Pippa Picnic Price

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has a strange obsession with the Middleton family, and especially younger daughter Pippa, to the extent that they are more than willing to play both sides of the field at once: copy will describe her as “Her Royal Hotness”, while at the same time attacking the family for appearing to be a little too, er, Royal.

Who're you f***ing calling obsessive, c***?!?

And the adoption by supermarket chain Waitrose of Pippa as their replacement for the evergreen Delia Smith has sent Dacre and his attack doggies into apoplexy, so much so that Claire Ellicott has been detailed to rubbish a feature in the Waitrose magazine on the grounds of cost. Many readers will be taken in by the apparently authoritative pricing. They should look a little closer.

The secret of Pippa's smile ... Sparking wine!

“Pippa's Provencal Picnic is intended as romantic meal for two ...Includes fig and goat's cheese fougasse ... Also on the menu is peach and vanilla fizz made with sparking [sic] wine ... The total cost of the menu is £60.02 for two, or £30.01 per person” [my emphasis]. And, as the man said, there’s more: the graphic gets the total up to a whopping £99.57, after bundling in the vino.

That’s one pricy picnic. But then the eye starts to scan down the list of ingredients. Peach and Vanilla Fizz, for starters: you’d chuck all the caster sugar into it? Eeurgh! Of course you wouldn’t. And, as for the Fig and Goat’s Cheese Fougasse, you definitely wouldn’t use a whole litre of olive oil, pack of sea salt or goat’s cheese. Hell’s teeth, this is a recipe for two, after all.

You're going to use all of that?

It gets worse: the Smoked Chicken and Melon Salad won’t use a whole chicken, or another whole litre of olive oil, and certainly not all the contents of the clear honey and red wine vinegar. And as for putting a whole cucumber in it, er, yeah, would you care to repeat that? The Strawberry and Lavender Cheesecake Jars continues the theme (a whole pack of icing sugar and pack of Philly ... yummy (not)).

Supermarket mags are full of idealised recipes. They serve one main purpose, and that’s to give customers an idea of what they can cook up from the kind of ingredients they may have to buy in, but equally may already have in the food store or fridge. No-one is going to go out and buy every one of those ingredients just to put together a summer picnic.

So what is the purpose of the Mail’s article, other than a crude hatchet job, which in any case will do little more than generate free publicity for Waitrose and Ms Middleton? In any case, Dacre’s attack doggies misjudge their target: your average Waitrose customer is far readier to spend more on a special occasion. Why d’you think they shop there in the first place?

It’s a strangely pointless obsession that the Mail has here. No change there, then.