Offered a packet of prawn cocktail crisps in 2024 and you’d barely bat an eyelid – but there was a time when today’s popular flavours were not only a talking point but a topic fit for national television. 

A resurfaced clip from a 1981 episode of BBC consumer right’s programme ‘That’s Life!’ shows just how novel – and newsworthy – flavoured crisps were in the UK in the early 80s.

The segment begins with presenter Esther Rantzen asking the question: ‘Have you noticed how exotic the humble crisp has become?’

‘Once it was plain and then it was salted. And now they have the most extraordinary flavours,’ she continues.  

In the hilarious clip – which went viral when it was reposted by X account ‘No Context Brits’ on Monday – That’s Life! journalist Paul Heiney goes to a northern town with different crisps and asks passers-by if they can identify the new flavours.

While the first flavoured crisp was released in the late 1950s, it would be another decade before salt and vinegar crisps were available throughout the UK. 

The blind taste test, which includes prawn cocktail, chicken and pickled onion varieties, proves challenging for the interviewees – but the best bit comes when the flavours are revealed. 

Their gobsmacked expressions, sheer disbelief and funny quips have both the gathered crowds and the studio audience in fits of laughter.

Viewed 1,100,000 times in just three days, the clip has prompted more than 250 responses on X, with many people voicing their nostalgia for the postwar generation and others likening the segment to a Monty Python sketch.

X users have also pointed out that the clip appears much older than it is – with one person suggesting it could be from the 1950s.  

Unfazed by the camera, the first woman asked to take part in the tasting insists she ‘can’t tell’ the flavour of the crisps she’s just sampled.

When pressed by the interviewer, the woman, who is wearing a knitted hat and an overcoat, admits: ‘They just taste like the ordinary… the ordinary… they’re a bit fishy.’

Seconds later, when she finds out that the crisps she’d tasted were in fact bacon flavour, the woman is left reeling. ‘Never,’ she exclaims.  

Even funnier, however, is her reaction to the second taste test. 

‘It’s very difficult,’ she says when the interviewer asks her what flavour the crisps are.

When she’s told they are chicken flavour, the woman is noticeably baffled and again exclaims, ‘never’. 

Turning to a member of the crowd, she adds confidently: ‘ ‘They’re chicken? But they don’t taste like the chicken I do. It’s not coq au vin is it?’

The third variety provokes a similarly hilarious response from the woman. Believing the crisps to be salt and vinegar flavour, she is audibly and visibly shocked when she discovers that they are prawn cocktail. 

With her eyes wide open, she looks down at the crisps and shouts, ‘Oh, oh prawn cocktail,’ as though nothing could be stranger.  

Next, the interviewer turns to an old man wearing a flat cap and offers him some crisps to taste.

Asked if it’s ‘a bit difficult’ to tell the flavour, the smiling man replies, ‘If you tell me what it is, I’ll confirm it.’

The encounter becomes even funnier when the interviewer offers the man a clue. 

‘It’s got two legs,’ he says. The man then quips: ‘It’s not a frog, is it?’

The interviewer adds, ‘flaps its wings,’ to which the man absurdly responds, ‘butterfly’. 

Confused by the man’s response, the journalist questions, ‘butterfly crisps?’. Finally, he reveals the flavour: ‘Chicken crisps they are.’

The exchange descends into laughter when the man is offered a second variety with the clue, ‘That one hasn’t got any legs at all.’

Enjoying his five minutes of fame, the man asks: ‘It’s not snake, is it?’ 

The third and final woman who takes part in the taste test gets the most laughs thanks to her suspicious attitude and unwillingness to accept the truth when it’s revealed.

Elderly and wearing a patterned headscarf, the woman believes she is being tricked when the interviewer offers her some crisps and asks what flavour they are.

Quick as a flash, she asks: ‘What muck have you got in them?’.

Encouraged to try them, she takes one and eats it slowly and deliberately before reaching the conclusion that they are cheese and onion flavour.

So sure is she that she’s got the flavour right, the woman appears almost offended when the interviewer replies: ‘No. Why does it taste like cheese and onion?’

Unwavering, she insists: ‘Because they are cheese and onion.’ 

When the interviewer again tells her she’s wrong, the woman replies with certainty: ‘I know what I’m eating love. They’re cheese and onion.’

Eventually, she’s told that the crisps she’s just tasted are pickled onion flavour – and she’s not impressed.

Her expression changes and she half rolls her eyes. Before she can get away, the interviewer asks her to try another variety.

This time she is more cautious, taking just a small bite of one crisp. 

Convinced that ‘they’re the same bloody things,’ she doesn’t believe the interviewer when he tells her they’re plain. ‘Who are you kidding?’, she snaps.

When asked to try a third variety, the woman turns to the interviewer and says: ‘I’m a Geordie man. You English can’t kid me.’

She takes two cautious bites and quickly decides that they’re salt and vinegar. 

Told she’s wrong, the woman becomes visibly aggravated. ‘Hee, don’t  kid us man,’ she tells the interviewer.  

Gently goading her, he asks: ‘Can Geordies always tell what flavour crisps are?’

‘Yeah,’ the woman replies defiantly.  

Asked to try a fourth variety, the woman again gets the flavour wrong. Believing the crisps to be plain – when in fact they’re chicken – she quips: ‘It’s like your bleedin’ bat soup innit?’

The clip, which was originally posted on X by BBC Archive last year, found a new audience when it was posted by the No Context Brits account earlier this week. 

With 1,100,000 million views, the clip appears to have appealed to viewers’ nostalgia for the ‘quaint uniqueness’ of 1980s Britain.

One person commented: ‘The country has gone a bit vanilla hasn’t it – it used to have distinct regions and characters, now it’s all the damn same. Shame.’ 

Another person celebrated the individuals who appear in the clip, writing: ‘My nan’s generation – the greatest generation. All individuals, and all terribly missed.’

A third, who was keen to understand why those interviewed failed the taste test, reflected: ‘People had just endured years of rationing so to them everything tasted like spam or baked beans.’

Another person – an American – appeared to relate to the interviewees’ failure to identify the flavours.

‘We have the same issue here in the States with Lays. Every one of their flavoured crisps ends up tasting like mayonnaise,’ they wrote.  

A fifth person enthused patriotically: ‘When people try to be clever and ask what traditional British culture is. THIS. ABSOLUTELY THIS.

‘It’s a state of mind. It’s the quaint uniqueness of our people. It’s the unassuming demeanour hiding a backbone of steel. Rule Britannia.’ 

People also likened the encounters in the clip to famous comedy sketches, with one person posting: ‘The first woman sounds like a Monty Python character.’ 

Referring to popular British comedy Fawlty Towers, another said: ‘Close your eyes and listen to the first woman. Sounds like Sybil Fawlty.’ 

Someone else couldn’t believe that the clip was from the 1980s, believing it to be much older.

They wrote: ‘Why does so much footage from the UK from that period look like it’s from about 30 years earlier than it actually was? Like this looks like it’s 1950.’

Another person simply enthused: ‘One of the best things I’ve seen on Twitter. Absolutely hilarious.’