‘I fucking hate Marmite,’ said Andy McLeod, a young ad man who at some point in the mid-1990s was tasked with remarketing the savoury spread that had been around since 1902. ‘Oh, I love it,’ said his creative partner. They both then just looked at each other.

You either love it or you hate it, Marmite – at least since 1996. At first, the yeast extract, made with the vitamin-rich by-products of beer-brewing at a factory in Burton on Trent, had been promoted as healthy, ‘the growing-up spread you never grow out of’. By the 1980s, it was ‘My mate, Marmite’, shouted by an army platoon, playing on its history as a supplement for British-based POWs during the second world war. For the past 30 years, though, it has become a byword for that which is polarising, divisive, able to provoke strong reactions. That which is unapologetically hated as much as it is loved.

Oh the joy of watching........

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