This must surely be the season of silly serving suggestions. When else would you buy a gift-wrapped, half-sized Christmas cake containing the following instruction:
“Serving suggestion: Take a long knife – not sharp, not serrated! – and cut the cake in half. Turn the cake through 90 degrees and make a second cut.
“You should now have four pieces. Good for sharing!
“Notice the helpful little helping of Health and Safety that crept in there? About using ‘…a long knife, not sharp, not serrated…’? The cake wrapper writer would have done better when devising his geometric slicing plan by cautioning against an even greater threat to Health and Safety… cake rage.
My mini Crimble cake was bought for three – i.e. not four – boys. Good for sharing? Maybe, but definitely g-r-r-reat for squabbling!
That wasn’t the most pointless serving suggestion I’ve seen so far in this silliest of seasons. That honour belong to the bottle of sparkling mineral water which urged that I might charm friends to whom I should offer it “over ice with a slice”.
Somehow I can’t see that cutting any ice with MY drinking buddies!
DAVID BANKS is a former editor of the Daily Mirror (UK) and Daily Telegraph (Australia) and was a senior executive with The Australian, New York Post, New York Daily News and The Sun before becoming a columnist and broadcaster.
