Unless you are one of those who don't have a television set, or who only watch opera on BBC4, you will surely have noticed an advertisement currently playing between the acts on the commercial channels. A man and a woman are sitting at a table finishing a sandwich. He is guiltily unsatisfied with the neat, respectable snack/sex they've just had. 'I do love Kate,' he whispers to a friend on the phone. 'It's just those sandwiches. I need something filthy, like a kebab.' His mate advises him to get himself a Pot Noodle. Cut to dark alleys, garish neon and gaudy young women outside 'Live Food' shows. Our man asks one if she does Pot Noodles and receives a slap round the face. Some things a girl won't provide. He keeps trying and failing until eventually he finds a woman willing to give him what he wants. She looks about shiftily and whispers: 'Round the back.' The two of them are on a bed, guzzling their Pot Noodles and groaning with extreme pleasure. 'It felt so wrong - and yet it felt so right,' the man intones in a voice-over. The advertisement ends with a shot of a Pot Noodle and a woman's voice declaring: 'Pot Noodle - the slag of all snacks.'

LRB 25 July 2002 | PDF Download