"I remember the very first time I had racist marmalade. It was given to me by my grandfather, and I was nine."
Conservative MP and racist marmalade enthusiast Sir Humphrey Charterhouse has very happy memories of Robinson's Golden Wollygog - happy memories he shares with millions of elderly Britons. "It was a joy to open a new jar of racist marmalade," Sir Humphrey recalls. "The slight resistance of the lid, the satisfying 'pop!' as it gave way under pressure, the tangy smell of preserved oranges hitting the nostrils, the racism - simply wonderful! Those were the days. Marmalade hasn't been the same since they got rid of the racism."
Robinson's Golden Wollygog was an instant hit when it first appeared on shelves in 1900. Before its introduction, Britain's housewives only had several brands of non-racist marmalade to choose from. This did not go down well.
"It's hard to believe now, but not having a racist option led to conflict in many family homes," says social historian Lucy Loosely. "A lot of men had spent several years sticking bayonets into black people for Queen Victoria, and when they returned home they expected racist marmalade on their toast and all there was was non-racist marmalade. They often took their frustration at the lack of racist marmalade out on their wives."
Domestic harmony was restored with the introduction of Golden Wollygog, and it quickly became the best selling marmalade in the country. Britons couldn't get enough of it, with many saying the racism improved the flavour. Soon there was a jar of Golden Wollygog in every home, and customers didn't just love the marmalade - they lapped up the merchandise that came with it such as soft toy Wollys for racist children, Wolly tea-towels to dry the washing up in the most racist way possible and tie-in promotions such as 1933's 'Keep the Buggers Out!' campaign run by the British Union of Fascists.
"I had a little Wolly jazz band," laughs Sir Humphrey. "You cut out the tokens on the labels and when you'd saved up ten of them, you wrote off to Robinson's and they sent you another member of the band. There was a trumpet player, a drummer, a double bass player and a singer. They were all carrying their instruments upside down because they're a backwards people with smaller brains than the white man. That's a scientific fact."
Despite Golden Wollygog's popularity, however, storm clouds were on the horizon.
"After the Second World War, people from the Caribbean colonies were invited to come and work in Britain," says Loosely. "One of the first things they noticed was just how racist our marmalade was. At first they kept their thoughts to themselves because they were vastly outnumbered by racist marmalade enthusiasts, but as social attitudes began to change - especially amongst young people who had never bayonetted black people for Queen Victoria - they felt more comfortable in saying, 'Hang on. Why is there an offensive cartoon of me on this jar of marmalade?'"
"That's when the rot set in," says Sir Humphrey Charterhouse. "When the coloureds ganged up with the pansies and the bra-burners in the seventies and demanded all sorts of nonsense such as equal rights, health and safety legislation and an end to racist marmalade. We tried to fight them by muttering things under our breath, but the writing was on the wall."
The writing was indeed on the wall. Thanks to the tireless efforts of campaigners throughout the 1980s, Robinson's quickly bowed to pressure and discontinued Golden Wollygog in 2001. Now racist marmalade is an unacceptable relic of a bygone era and most people are happy to keep it that way.
"I'm not," shouts Sir Humphrey Charterhouse. "I had some supermarket own brand marmalade this morning and it was dreadful. If Tesco had stuck a cartoon of a Chinaman with buck teeth and slitty little eyes on the label, I bet it would have tasted delicious. This country's gone to the bloody dogs."
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