Twenty-five years ago, a Stonehaven schoolboy having a carry-on invented the dish that now defines Scotland as much as haggis, neeps and tatties.
At lunchtime, a group of lads headed to the Haven chip shop, where they dared each other to eat more and more outlandish battered items.
John Twaddle bet Brian McDonald that he wouldn’t eat a deep-fried Mars bar.
John placed the order with duty frier Evelyn Balgowan. She was unsure how, exactly, to deep fry and batter a chocolate, nougat and caramel confection, so she phoned her boss.
He talked her through it and the bar emerged, bronzed and melting, from the frier and young Brian won his bet.
The lads returned to Mackie Academy full of the story.
It started a craze as the cool kids wanted to have their sweeties battered and served with chips.
It came to the attention of the Aberdeen Evening Express, who ran a short article but it took the Daily Record to give the story the colourful coverage it deserved.
Suddenly everyone was talking about DFMBs.
By the end of the week, Keith Chegwin had eaten one on The Big Breakfast and the story made the BBC World Service.
The DFMB story coincided with the start of Scotland’s obesity epidemic, which now means that 65 per cent of the adult population is overweight.
The DFMB became a symbol of Scotland’s poor relationship with food and was mentioned as one cause of “the Glasgow effect”, as experts struggled to explain why life expectancy in the city was lower than anywhere else in the UK.
Few Scots have eaten a DFMB.
Those who have – possibly, like Brian McDonald, for a bet – have not made it a regular part of their diet. Yet it has become linked in the international mind with Scotland.
Jay Leno mentioned it on his show in 2004.
Today’s DFMB eaters are tourists who think they are trying one of our national dishes. It’s in guidebooks and on tourist websites.
At the Haven, which is now the Carron Fish Bar, owner Lorraine Watson found an Italian phrase book with a guide on how to order one.
She sells up to 200 DFMBs a day in summer, mostly to visitors.
In 2012, the Haven failed to get protected EU status to put the DFMB up there with Cornish pasties and Arbroath smokies.
Mars demanded the chip shop makes it clear that deep frying its bar is “not authorised or endorsed” by the company.
In 2015, Aberdeenshire council demanded the shop remove a banner advertising it as the snack’s home. The community helped to save the sign.
Today, Glasgow’s Blue Lagoon chain has the DFMB on the menu and the treats are popular in Edinburgh. There is even a DFMB pizza.
Nigella Lawson deep-fried fun-sized Bounty bars on her Nigella Bites series.
Battered and fried Creme Eggs even pop up as Easter treats.
We Scots might not want to eat them but, 25 years on, we have accepted the deep-fried Mars bar as one of our own. It’s not going anywhere.
