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Mark Hodgins
HobNob Review |
Dear Nicey and Wifey,
I am delighted to inform you that Dark Chocolate Hob-Nobs have at last returned to Waitrose in Frimley, Surrey, after a long absence marked by occasional requests to the staff.
Mark. |
| Nicey replies: Mark
Thank you for that heads up on the Dark chocolate HobNob situation in Frimley. |
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Emily
HobNob Review |
Hello Nicey, Wifey & YMOS,
At last! Sainsbury's are stocking the elusive dark chocolate HobNob- at least a certain branch in Greater Manchester is (I should probably keep the exact location under wraps to avoid a stampede- I don't want to be responsible for the M6 being even more gridlocked than usual). Anyway, I managed to show remarkable restraint and only bought one packet, although considerably less when I got them home and ate 3 in one go. They'd just sidled back onto the shelves as though they'd never been away- no attention drawn to them at all. I would have thought the least they deserved was a label saying "back by popular demand" or something, perhaps even their own end-of-aisle display. I've also noticed that Sainsbury's, at least the couple of branches I frequent in the Greater Manchester area, seem to have stopped selling Tim Tams, although I've had reports of branches in the South still selling them. Maybe it's a whole new North/South biscuit divide: the South gets exotic foreign biscuits, while the North gets flat cap-wearing HobNobs. I'm already picturing surreptitious meetings in a service station cafe (probably with rubbish tea in chipped mugs) somewhere in the Midlands with people from opposite ends of the country swapping packs of DC HobNobs and Tim Tams under the table before smuggling them back home and opening biscuit-speakeasies. But that's probably just my imagination running wild.
Emily |
| Nicey replies: Thanks for the Dark Chocolate Hobnob tip off. Will we all start showing our age by calling them Plain rather than Dark I wonder, much in the way my Nan used to call our 1970's Sony Music centre with its pre-soft eject top loading fling it across the room cassette eject - the radiogram. Actually I'm showing my age just divulging that. Some of you are probably wondering what a cassette is.
You make a good point about the TimTams the've not been catching my eye recently either. |
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Nick Q
HobNob Review |
Dear Nicey
Tomorrow I have four gentlemen from the plumbing, heating and electrical professions arriving to replace my boiler, radiators and pipework. I already plan to leave out supplies of robustly flavoured teabags, coffee and white sugar but what is an appropriate biscuit to leave out for them? I do not wish to appear extravagant and therefore an easy touch, but I also do not want to appear cheap. Pink wafers, I'm sure we all agree, would be highly inappropriate but what would be the right thing? Your archives suggest the plain HobNob is a good choice for builders. Does this also apply to plumbing and heating engineers?
When they visited last week to assess the job, they sounded distinctly like Yorkshiremen which adds another angle to the question as I'm in London so I guess they're down here on contract or something.
Best Wishes to you and the YMOS
Nick Q |
| Nicey replies: Nick,
Good to hear from you again. Important to get your boiler sorted quickly and efficiently in the middle of February so I think you are right to go with the HobNob. It strikes that happy middle ground very well, but possibly a Fruit Shortcake would perform much the same. If the job looks like taking a day or two and you develop a convivial rapport then may be you could finish up with a few Penguins on the side as 'bonus'.
Of course if you are out at work whilst the tradesmen are at work then your choice of biscuit will be even more important as it is essentially part of the dialogue between you and them. A quick glance around your home will in their minds already pre-dispose you to leaving out a certain type of biscuit and you don't want to come in below or above that mark for the reasons you have outlined.
I'm sure it will be fine. |
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Nicky Bramley
HobNob Review |
You have completely made my day by telling me that Plain Chocolate HobNobs are coming back as Dark Chocolate HobNobs! I wrote to McVities when they were discontinued to plead the case, so it's great to see they've bowed to public pressure (I'm assuming it wasn't just me that changed their mind).
I hope the chocolate will be a teensy bit darker than previously, just to add more contrast to the lovely hobnob bit.
I'll stop jigging about the office now, because people are starting to look at me funny.
Nicky |
| Nicey replies: Yes it did seem incomprehensible that they dropped them in the first place.
Mind you if the ever bring back the Abbey Crunch I will openly weep tears of joy in public I suspect. |
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Phil Musselwhite
HobNob Review |
Bah!
I have been diligently working hard to shift the Christmas indulgence, and now news has come in that I’m going to start eating biscuits in large quantities again. Great news for those not overweight though.
I wonder how far one has to cycle to shift a half-packet of Dark Chocolate Hobnobs’ worth of calories.
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| Nicey replies: Yes the HobNob Mile (HbM ?) seems like a very useful unit of measurement. Once we have that we can estimate how many packets of HobNobs are required for a man to cycle to the shops / pub / moon etc which certainly seems much easier to grasp than all of this talk of abstract calories. Then all other foods would be relative to the HobNob rather than the teaspoon of sugar which seems to laid claim to this particular area. It would also be useful to have a measurement of how much other foods were like HobNobs. Things like oysters, kale and olives would score badly on the 'being like HobNobs scale' where as flapjack would do very well.
I'm sure there is still a bit of free space left on packaging to fit these extra arbitrary figues, that way consumers would know for definite that tins of sardines in tomato sauce were not at all like Hobnobs, and how far they could cycle before collapsing if they were to eat a whole box Frosties. |
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