Please remain calm, but Nutella riots have broken out in France. The Intermarché supermarket chain offered a 70% discount and people have been pushing and shoving each other to get their hands on the sweet, nutty, brown stuff.
While it has hardly reached the bloody heights of the French Revolution, there have been some reports of Nutella-related injuries – hurt hands, the odd bit of hair pulling – and people fighting “like animals”.
The makers of Nutella say that they regret the violence and that Intermarché had announced the discount unilaterally, but perhaps they’re secretly loving all the unexpected buzz about their product.
British people should also be delighted. Just this once, a shopping shame story isn’t about the UK and Black Friday, that delightful time in the national calendar when, for some people, it suddenly seems perfectly reasonable to roll about on the floor of a department store, gouging out eyeballs, in a fight to the death for the last half-price plasma TV.
News of the French Nutella Riots puts things into perspective. Say what you like about the British, but they wouldn’t behave “like animals” for a jar of Nutella. Discounted Marmite, however, might be quite another matter.
