When I was young I may not have had the classiest of diets, counting Pot Noodle as a foreign food and tomato ketchup as more or less a vegetable (yes, the tomato is technically a fruit, but I didn’t realise this until I was 33. Pub quizzes can be very educational). But I did know that there were some things in life so perfect in their simplicity that they should never be messed about with, such as cheese on toast, rice pudding, fish and chips and the effortless, natural bounce in Peter Purves’s hair.

Fast-forward 30 years to the new age and look what’s happened. They have primped and fussed with the seamless work of art that is the humble crisp and tarted it up like a collie in ringlets. Cheese ’n’ onion crisps have become, inexplicably, Flavourburst Caramelised Onion and Mature Cheddar Crisps. Prawn cocktail flavour has morphed into Gourmet Tiger Prawn and Crushed Garlic. It’s like putting a paper umbrella and two glacé cherries in a pint of mild, or a long leather jacket on a balding man of 50. It's embarrassing. Stop it. Crisps do not need a Thai infusion. Baked beans shouldn’t come within a country mile of jalfrezi. And ketchup, well…

Heinz, maker of the pretty damn flawless tomato ketchup, has gone all la-di-da and produced Special Blend Tomato Sauce, its “first gourmet table sauce”, ie, the posh man’s squeezy ketchup. It contains a dozen fine, plump tomatoes, cayenne pepper, white wine vinegar and comes in an aspirationally shaped glass bottle with a rustic brown label, evoking images of sun-dappled farmhouses, not a truckers’ greasy spoon on the A65. Apparently, it’s “the ideal condiment for families who want a sophisticated table sauce”. It’s also £1.75 – three times more expensive than the other stuff.

In truth, restaurants have been trying to hijack tomato ketchup for years, calling it “sauce” and disguising it in twee china pots with teensy spoons to which the ketchup sticks and you have to bang it on your plate. In middle-class homes where they’d rather cut their throats with a fish knife than place a bottle of ketchup on the table, I’ve seen them hide it in special dispensers, like the ones for liquid soap, which must be terribly confusing when drunk.

But now I eat my words because I’ve just tried some of the Special Blend stuff and it is absolutely lovely. Much spicier than the original, a bit like mild salsa, and very intense, fresh even. Hyacinth Bucket would approve. And actually, posh doing common is less cringey than common doing posh, as anyone who has seen faux Georgian pillars on a pebble-dashed semi or a Ratners decanter containing Lidl whisky will agree.

My only quibble is that Heinz refers to Special Blend as a “superior” sauce. It’s different, yes. Fancier, definitely. But that doesn’t make it superior. Just like Take That, Heinz, you should never forget where you came from.

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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