Colm O'Regan: Mince pie flavoured biscuits? NO!

It’s part of the overwhelming effort to brand EVERYTHING to make it more Christmassy. But you don’t need to make chocolate biscuits ‘festive’ or ‘seasonal’.

There was nothing to indicate how sinister the turn of events would be. It was just a normal shop. A lovely little shop, a pleasing throwback to the days when there wasn’t too much choice in the shops. The shelves weren’t integrated modular retail solutions provided by an integrated modular retail solutions provider. They were just shelves. I was in the mood for biscuits.

They had three types of biscuits. One plain, two chocolate. Given the year we’ve had and that it was a Monday, it was going to be chocolate. One packet had a suspicious green tinge. I checked in case it was a stealth-mint situation. (Minty flavours are fine if it’s on purpose but you don’t want to be surprised by mint.) ‘Plum pudding flavour’ said the wrapper. That was a lucky escape. I chose the other. Its colour scheme seemed normal and chocolatey. I didn’t read the label. You can hear the doomy music starting as you read this.