After the launch, by the Icecreamists restaurant in Covent Garden, of an ice cream made from human breast milk, Ben & Jerry’s have taken up the challenge of creating new flavours from body fluids. Sylvia Simmonds, Press Officer in the company’s Relentless Self-Publicity Department, explained the new business strategy.
“In formulating new flavours”, said Sylvia, “we’ve used our own staff as inspiration. ‘Spunky Monkey’ was the first of our new flavours to go on sale. It was the obvious choice, I suppose, though not everyone finds it easy to swallow. ‘Chilly Philly’ derives its intriguing, soft cheese flavour from Bob - not his real name - in the packing department, who, if the rumours are true, hasn’t washed under his foreskin in living memory.
“What’s left after a session of colonic irrigation is normally thrown away. Well, not any more. While we’ve kept the name of our ‘Mississippi Mud’ ice cream, we’ve made some dramatic changes to the list of ingredients. Let’s just say it will now appeal particularly to the coprophiliacs amongst our customers. ‘Pavement Pizza’ is proving to be something of an acquired taste; we simply don’t understand how it is that diced carrots keeping turning up in every batch. ‘Sweaty Betty’ is dedicated to Betty Trasker, my hard-working PA - take a bow, Betty, don’t be shy! - who, for reasons best known to herself, is reluctant to use the industrial-strength deodorant I bought her.
“We don’t intend to rest on our laurels. We have a lot of new flavours in the pipeline, which will all need elaborate, punning names which sound mildly amusing the first time you hear them. We’re still trying to think up something appropriate for our piss-flavoured offering. We’ve contacted Slash, legendary guitarist from the band Guns N’ Roses, to see if there might be some celebrity tie-in there. We’re still waiting to hear from James Blunt’s agent, about lending his name to a flavour inspired by Pam - that is her real name - who works in my own department. Due to a yeast infection, she suffers from a rather pungent vaginal discharge. We see it as a win-win situation. We get a new ice-cream flavour; she never needs to buy salad dressing again.
“For our shit-flavoured ice-cream, we’re negotiating with James Corden. Oh, no particular reason”...