The recent celebrity of SPAM in the corpus of Monty Python (viewed recently by Condoleeza Rice) has obscured the very nature of the product. Many of these images and their variants appeared on the back cover of the National Geographic. My parents however needed no stimulus to buy. Tins of the luncheon meat were stacked high in the larder at Handforth. Every other night, my mother would slice the SPAM as shown above and lower portion each into batter before frying. If it was a good night you got two of these yellow bloated items in peas and mashed potatoes.

Oriole remembers that, at her school, cubes of SPAM were dropped into gravy and boiled for several hours to achieve that definitive tenderness we have all grown to adore.

The SPAM narratives seldom had the product in an identifiable domestic interior or associated with a living human being. The images were almost entirely functional in the promotion of yet more audacious recipes where SPAM ruled supreme. You have to admire the brass necked cheek shown above in finding new outlets for the meat.

SCRAMBLE YOUR EGGS WITH SPAM