The Ginger Nut Biscuit. You either love it or you hate it. For me, the crunchy texture and sweet, tangy taste is perfectly palatable – a true modest British ‘biccy’. Yet the product is disappearing from supermarket shelves at an alarming rate, replaced by Almond Thins or something pretentious like that. This humble, unassuming biscuit may not be luxurious but it is packed with a powerful fiery taste – The Ginger Nut is Britain.
I’ve often been called a ‘Ginger Nut’, for as you can see I have hair of the vivid orange variety. Walking home, minding my own business, I’ll be serenaded by gangs of brown-mopped yobs screaming their war cry: “Get back in your biscuit tin; ginger, ginger!” The Chaucerian beauty of it is truly magical.
This Christmas York’s very own Tesco stores indulged in a spot of ‘carrot-top bashing’ and were forced to remove a card that sneered: “Santa loves all kids. Even ginger ones.” This was after a mother complained that the card was offensive to herself and her three redhead daughters. The country chuckled this story off lightly but surely it is an example of discrimination which encourages bullying. Imagine the uproar if the manufacturer designed a similar work entitled: “Santa loves all kids. Even homosexual, four-eyed fatties in wheelchairs, from a racial minority.” It would cause disgusted uproar and quite rightly so.
Tesco have apologised for the affair, “It is never our intention to offend any customer and we are sorry if this card caused any upset,” they said. However this is a tame occurrence compared to other instances of ‘gingerist’ bullying. In California, the Huffington Post reported that seven students were attacked at school on a so called ‘Kick a Ginger Day’. YouTube has marvelously revolting videos such as ‘Exterminate all Gingers’ while Facebook has a number of classy groups subtly entitled ‘WE HATE GINGER PEOPLE’.
It appears that gingers have always had a hard time. While browsing the chronicles written by a Frankish chap called Notker the Stammerer in 884, I sympathetically noted one “poor red-headed fellow”. So self-conscious was he in church, that he balanced, “one of his boots on top of his head, for he had no cap”. The Bishop, incensed by this novel use of footwear, had the man dragged forward and declared to the audience, “Lo and behold, all of you people! This fool is red-headed!” The man was chained and sent swiftly back to his biscuit tin wondering why he’d bothered getting up that morning.
But if you delve into our past many of our greatest national heroes carried a carrot-topped crown – King Arthur, Queen Elizabeth I, Cromwell, Darwin and Churchill. And now we can add one more illustrious character to this prestigious list. The ever-sober and respectable prince of politeness… Harry Windsor. Red hair is central to British history and identity; the foundation stone as this country burns with the flecks of the most vivid orange. Yet we are derided.
However in 2004, Jonathan Rees suggested that red hair’s increasing rarity could lead it to becoming desirable in a partner! (Unfortunately, I can provide no personal proof on the subject; but in India, men even colour their hair with saffron to allure the ladies.) Thus, the pigment pheomalin (which gives the colour) will become more common!
The idea that red heads will be extinct by 2060 is utter twaddle. Red hair is a recessive gene but that still means that bar the destruction of the human race, extinction is impossible. Yes, the number of gingers may decrease with increased multicultural breeding but the gene can’t be destroyed, it will just remain ‘hidden’ and thus will resurface. Ginger is a hair colour not a species of people!
So, when we pause for a moment; perhaps ‘Ginger Nuts’ aren’t doing as bad as you or I thought. Certainly they get a bad press, are mocked and abused by their rivals. But maybe; just maybe they’re due some true recognition. Perhaps someday they may even experience a glorious comeback. All that remains is the core debate. Should we dunk them in tea or not?