geek salad with jamborees

Well its Saturday morning here in the north eastern stretch of England. Its cold but the sky is bright blue with long streaky clouds. It looks like toothpaste.

I've often wondered about toothpaste. It holds that special place in TV history over here as it was the very first thing to be advertised on commercial television. Gibbs SR I seem to recall being told. I didn't see it. I was still being designed.

With such credentials toothpaste could well be more than it seems. For instance, on a desert island with nothing but two crates of Colgate, could it be eaten as food? Its unlikely we will have a toothbrush on the island so cleaning your teeth is out.

A most special item which is certainly food us the Jamboree. I know because I am currently eating five of them with my coffee. Its the breakfast of champions and for those who haven't been shopping properly for days.

In case you don't know a Jamboree is a biscuit. It could even be a cake, it's hard to say. A small biscuit base is covered with two lines of marshmallow, which in turn are sprinkled with desiccated coconut. A line of strawberry jam finds its way in there too. It is simply quite scrumptious.

The Jamboree comes in packets of about 12, which would last me about 3 cups of tea or coffee. It was once even catapulted to the centre of our Christmas table [not literally!] in 1984, when Missus Moonbase and I were young penniless parents. That freezing Welsh Christmas Day we had nothing but our newborn and a bag of precious food from the Co-op, which included a packet of Jamborees.

They do go under different names. Jamboree is a brand I think and as with all success come knockoffs and clones, which my Daughter informs me are called 'me too's' in the food industry. Jamborees were also known as Fiesta in some quarters [probably the car industry] and the ones I'm eating now from our local mini-market are called Bobby's Mallows! Now that's a name straight out of Viz!

The question of whether its a biscuit or a cake is one which has made grown men weep into strong Yorkshire tea. As perplexing as whether tomatoes could be placed in the fruit bowl, the sheer extravagance of the Jamboree surely raises it above the mere rabble of everyday biscuits? Or is it simply mutton dressed as lamb? Or Mallow dressed as jam?

Joining similar delicacies like Viscounts, Tunnock's Wafers and Wagon Wheels, the vexing puzzle 'is it a biscuit or a cake?' is one The Riddler would have been proud of and one we can only ever hope to answer of we keep on sampling the goods!

What do you think readers?