Recently on the blog Hilary Osborne argued for the return of the tea round to British offices. I suspect it isn't just tea the nation's office drones are gagging for, it's a plate of biscuits. I hear that the Americans don't do biscuit trolleys, at least not in Hollywood. This week the star of Little Britain, Anthony Head revealed what goes on with catering backstage stateside,
In America and Canada you get these huge tables laden with food, in England you get tea and a biscuit if you're lucky ... You get fatter [in America] so you have to work out - which is really boring. [Working in Britain] it all depends what the biscuits are - Custard Creams are not good.
Not good? Hmmm... OK, they're not the bestest biscuit Britain has ever produced, but as Nice cup of tea and a sit down says,
Stick a few on a plate at any informal biscuit eating event such as a seminar, or dare I say it, coffee morning, and watch them disappear.
The British biscuit trolley runneth over. Fom the subdued Rich Tea, to the indulgent Bourbon, outdoorsy Wagon Wheel and historically significant Garibaldi there is a biscuit for everyone. Some argue, as they have in our Flickr group, that it is the Jaffa Cake that's the biscuit's knees. But this stalwart of late night TV fans is the biscuit that never was. It's officially, and controversially, a cake. No, when it comes to biscuits there is only one choice and that be, by a long line of crumbs, that combination of humility and exoticism, the fig roll.
The fig roll fuses the glamour of a fruit grown in the heat of north Africa with a very British, very comforting biscuity crunch. The Digestive may feign an appearance of health in both name and blandness, but it is the fig roll, packed with fruitpower, that is the real delivery boy of the biscuit world and Hollywood catering companies would do well to listen when the Brits are in town.
You think you know your biscuits? Take the biscuit tin quiz. Blimey, quite tough.
