Visible on almost every supermarket billboard, 'picky bits' is a food term that Richard Godwin is familiarising himself with.
Visible on almost every supermarket billboard, 'picky bits' is a food term that Richard Godwin is familiarising himself with.
Picky bits is a jocular term for that subcategory of English cuisine that includes sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, miniature samosas – essentially anything you can eat with your fingers.
It might be something pastry-based that you bung in the air fryer when you’ve guests round. It might be a ‘picky tea’ in front of MasterChef.
You might equally take advantage of the three-deli-items-for-£9 deal at the M&S Simply Food in Paddington. Let’s see here: some Dinky Cheddar and Onion Muffins, some Serrano Ham and Cheese Rollitos – maybe some mini-quiches? Now you have a ‘picky-bits picnic’ for the train. Wash it down with a cheeky gin-in-a-tin and you’re really on your hollibobs.
No one knows who coined this term. M&S has promoted it remorselessly via its social-media channels, even going so far as to declare 27th June National Picky Bits Day.
Indeed, it has achieved ubiquity surprisingly fast – even a measure of respectability. The drinks writer Neil Ridley recently published a work called The Picky Bits Sommelier, featuring such pairings as pork pie and Pinot noir, and cheese-and-pineapple hedgehogs with pisco sours.
In one light, ‘picky bits’ is simply a missing link in Britain’s culinary vocabulary – our mezze, our tapas. Clearly, from a gastronomic point of view, the sausage roll has nothing to apologise for in the company of the borek or the croqueta.
Still, from a morphological point of view ’picky bits’ somehow falls short of cicchetti or hors d’oeuvre. It emerges from the same lexical universe as ‘bubbly’ ‘crimbo’, ‘hubby’, ‘platty jubes’, ‘not a happy bunny’ and so on.
It’s part of a Middle Englandish, faintly northern vernacular that now passes seamlessly from family in-joke to supermarket promotion via social media.
The homely tone doesn’t quite conceal the fact that it actually connotes the death of the proper home-cooked family meal. ‘Just settling down to some picky bits and a cheeky gin-in-a-tin in front of the telly!’ ‘Too tired to cook! Picky tea for the kids it is, then,’ etc.
It’s at once gently ironic, always arriving with a side order of inverted commas, and somehow anti-ironic, in that it’s hard to maintain any air of discernment once one has uttered the phrase ‘picky bits’.
Still, maybe picky bits are what we need. The political commentator Jonny Ball recently coined the term ‘normie populism’ to describe the sort of down-to-earth, relatable politics that our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, will have to channel if he is to unite Britain’s warring tribes.
Perhaps Our Andy should declare National Picky Bits Day an official public holiday. We can all spend the day comparing Britpop records over dinky Cornish pasties, stuffed vine leaves and Wotsits. We are what we eat – and we are nothing if not picky.
