As many of you know, I am the self-proclaimed chair of the Philistine Liberation Organization. There is more about the PLO here.
In a recent taste test, shoppers were asked to choose between two different Christmas cakes. One, from Fortnam and Mason, was priced at about $60 Cdn. The other from Iceland (a low-price discount grocery store) was priced at about $11 Cdn.
Sure enough, more of the shoppers preferred the lower-priced alternative [ht MA].
We asked 25 members of the public out shopping near the Telegraph offices in central London which cake they prefered, without telling them the identity of the stores from which they came, nor their prices.
One of the passersby was Ben McCormack, a restaurant critic and editor of Square Meal magazine. He said of the Fortnum cake: “It’s a bit one-note, a bit synthetic”. After it was revealed that was his preferred choice the Iceland one, he said it was “well worth £7”.
Lorraine Kelly, the ITV presenter who happened to be shopping, said she prefered the Fortnum’s.
Many tasters said they could barely tell the difference between the two, but some pointed out that the Iceland cake was a bit more moist than its expensive rival. But at the end of the tasting session, Iceland were the winners, with 14 votes compared with Fortnum’s 11.
It wasn't terribly scientific [small sample, non-random sample, should have been double-blind, etc.] but it indicates once again the joy and power and sheer enjoyment of being a Philistine.
For other items about the PLO, see the posts linked here.