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Daily Mirror
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
McVities Hobnobs and the real reason behind biscuit's name leaving fans baffled
McVities' brand has become a household name worldwide, but do you know the story behind the name of their biscuits Hobnobs? It's so British - but it has caused some confusion. The inventor of the iconic and beloved tea-dunking biscuit, McVities' Hobnobs, has revealed the meaning behind the iconic biscuit 's name. Fans have been left baffled by the unlikely reason behind the rugged-edged treat's name, but it's genius. All was revealed in Channel 4 's The Secret World of Biscuits when the creator was quizzed over the Hobnob's name, which launched in supermarkets in 1985. Pam Langworthy, who helped develop and market the British delight, said: "[The focus groups] said [the biscuit] was knobbly, because, you know, it wasn't a very smooth finish in the way, for instance, Digestive or Rich Tea are. And they said it looked as if somebody had made it at home, maybe made it on a hob." She added: "And so, I wanted a name that was very easy to say and just rolled off the tongue. And so, 'Hobnob'." These biscuits have become hugely popular since the 80s, but arguably not as much as McVities' most popular biscuit worldwide, which is the unbeatable digestive. However, according to British Corner Shop, McVities Hobnobs are available in physical stores in France, USA, Italy, Germany, Canada, Spain, Austria and Denmark. The name Hobnob also derrives from the British verb 'to hobnob'. It means to spend time being friendly with someone important or a celebrity. Mindblowing, right? Hobnobs had a hard time at first Despite focus groups almost steering biscuit makers towards the name all those years ago, it wasn't a done deal from the off. Andrew Easdale, a co-worker of Pam, explained that their superiors wanted to keep it more 'homely'. He explained: 'There was a sort of I wouldn't say a stunned silence, but there was a, um, hmmm, followed by, 'couldn't you call it something a bit more descriptive, like 'oaty crunchies? I said, 'No, it's gonna be Hobnobs. We need a brand.' Thankfully, the name 'Hobnobs' was agreed and it has become a household name ever since. McVities has now become a popular brand, especially in the UK. The brand has climbed the biscuit ladder, and has been recognised for its iconic Jaffa Cakes, Rich Tea, as well as the famous digestives. Their brand is often the top choice by shoppers and a staple in many UK households as their go-to tea-dunking biscuits. As reported by Statista, it was estimated that 8.7 million people in the UK consumed McVities Chocolate Digestives, with 6.5 million plain McVities Digestives being consumed every day in the UK. Those numbers just prove how delicious these biscuits are, and how have they continue to be a household staple since their launch.
Daily Mail
26-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
The surprising secrets behind Britain's favourite biscuit, as McVities chocolate digestive turns 100
Every morning, for the past ten years of mornings, I have eaten a dark chocolate digestive biscuit. I don't really know how or why this habit started, but it did. I eat my daily digestive before I eat anything else and it is – I am convinced of this – good for me; it's structural, grounding. Also, it's not, actually, excessive. Each morning I limit myself to just one solitary biscuit, cold from the fridge, broken in half and eaten in bed. But one morning earlier this month, I was faced with millions and millions of them – and all before midday. To explain: this week the McVitie's chocolate digestive turns 100. To celebrate I visited the company's factory in Harlesden, Northwest London – the second largest biscuit factory in the world. The largest is the Chicago factory of Nabisco, whose biscuits include Oreos. McVitie's factory measures 50,000 sq m, the size of seven football pitches; Nabisco's is 170,000 sq m. At Harlesden, wearing a hi-vis vest and hairnet, I walk around the site with Nina Sparks and Fraser Jones, two McVitie's managers who have worked at the company for 27 and 28 years respectively. I ask how many chocolate digestives they think they eat in a week and Jones says, in a wistful voice, 'Well, I weighed about 11 stone when I started here.' Sparks remembers being pregnant and developing an intense craving for Rich Tea biscuits. 'I would go down the lines and just look at them. Rich Teas got me through my pregnancy.' The factory is open 24 hours a day, 362 days a year – Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day excluded – and most of the around 600 staff work 12-hour shifts, two days on, two days off. It produces 13 million chocolate digestives a day, as well as 12 million plain digestives, ten million Rich Teas, four million Chocolate Hobnobs, and 50 million Mini Cheddars. The latter tumble out of a gigantic oven like coins from a slot machine. Making a chocolate digestive works like this. First, the ingredients arrive by truck at the factory. While the chocolate obviously comes from abroad (often Ivory Coast), the base ingredients are harvested in Britain. The batter consists of, roughly, plain flour, wheat flour, vegetable oil, sugar, raising agents and salt, and it is prepared in two enormous mechanical food mixers. (The presence of fats and additives means a dark chocolate digestive scores a 'bad' 18/100 on the food rating app Yuka. But this neither bothers nor surprises me, given it is a delicious chocolate-covered biscuit.) Once mixed, the batter plummets down a tunnel, is flattened by a machine into a dough, then cut by another machine into 67mm-wide discs. Any excess dough is collected and transported up an electric helter-skelter where it is reused. After it's been stamped with holes to stop it from over-rising, the biscuit travels by conveyor belt into an 85 metre-long oven, moving forward constantly as it cooks. Here, Jones suggests I try a biscuit, fresh from the oven and straight off the factory line. Quickly, I pick one up. It's so hot it hurts to hold. It tastes fantastic. A man in a lab coat approaches the conveyor belt and plucks a biscuit off it, too. He is a quality checker and he does this every 15 minutes – taking a cooked biscuit to a special station, where he analyses its colour under what looks like a microscope, then crushes it up in a bowl, prodding a rod-shaped gadget into the granules and assessing its moisture levels. On the conveyor belt, the biscuits keep advancing – through a cooling machine and then over what look like rows of miniature train tracks, bubbling with liquid chocolate. This step of the process covers the biscuits' undersides in a bumpy layer of chocolate, which, Jones explains, is partly aesthetic (the ridges catch the light) and partly practical (it increases the chocolate's surface area). McVitie's refines and tempers its chocolate at the company's Manchester factory, transferring up to 60 tons of it a day to London. The lorries go in the middle of the night to avoid the traffic. The next stage of biscuit-making is complicated. Until now, the chocolate digestives have travelled on the conveyor belt as a mass, but in order to get into packets they need to be separated into several uniform lines. So they move off the conveyor belt and on to a sloped metal track, which is divided into lanes. As they slide downhill, the biscuits gain speed and bump against each other, falling naturally into place. There are tricks to reduce friction – cold air, for instance, is blasted underneath the metal track – but there's trouble if even one biscuit gets stuck. It can cause a pile-up that can lead to thousands of damaged and unusable biscuits. I ask Jones if he can recall the biggest biscuit car crash of his career. How many chocolate digestives might have been crushed at this stage in the process? He umms and ahhs. A lot? He gives an almost imperceptible nod. 'I'll leave it at that.' From here, everything is mostly done by robots. They wrap the biscuits in plastic (16 per pack), then put the packets in boxes, the boxes on pallets, and the pallets in trucks. The whole process – ingredients arriving, biscuits being made, products being shipped – is dependent on all of its parts functioning. 'We had this discussion during Covid: if the world comes to an end and everything stops, how long can we keep running for with the stock we have?' says Sparks. 'We landed on 18 hours.' McVitie's began in Edinburgh in 1839 with a baker called Robert McVitie. But it wasn't until 1892 that the company began selling digestives. It's unclear who exactly invented the biscuit (records suggest digestives were first made by a duo of Scottish doctors in 1839, who claimed the bicarbonate of soda present in the recipe aided digestion). Either way, McVitie's made it popular. And in 1925, employee Alexander Grant had the sense to coat a plain digestive with chocolate. Today, McVitie's sells £157 million worth of chocolate digestives a year; according to the firm's data, one in three British households consumes a £2.25 packet a week. Of those, around 80 per cent are milk chocolate and 20 per cent are dark. Out of interest, I looked at Sainsbury's customer reviews for McVitie's milk chocolate digestives. And, while it may be strange to leave a review for the most famous biscuit on earth, they're all positive; 313 in total and a 4.7-star average. 'Very good and crunchy,' says one. 'What a brilliant biscuit!' says another. When I leave the factory, I say to Sparks and Jones that I don't think I'll ever eat my dark chocolate digestive in the same way. And the next morning, as I have my ritual biscuit, I think about the process that brought it here: the flour being harvested in the fields, the tons of chocolate travelling down the motorway at night, the conveyor-belt oven, the packaging robots. The fact that, as I break the biscuit in half, all of this is happening right now, and will continue to happen every second of the day until Christmas Day, is a bit dizzying and also amazing. As that wise reviewer put it, what a brilliant biscuit! McVITIE'S IN NUMBERS £2 billion The price paid by Turkish company Yildiz in 2014 to acquire United Biscuits, which includes McVitie's. 1902 The year McVitie's opened its Harlesden factory in London. 6.5 minutes Amount of time a digestive takes to cook (at 280C). 47 years The time its longest-serving employee has worked at the factory. 0.6% The waste McVitie's creates a year. It resells faulty biscuits to animal-food companies.
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘People live to 90 and don't do half of what I've done': Boxing trainer Joe Gallagher on facing up to cancer
'I am a little scared,' Joe Gallagher says quietly as, in a deserted room upstairs at his famous old gym in Moss Side, Manchester, he addresses the stage four bowel and liver cancer that has taken hold of him. Two hours earlier, while giving me a guided tour of the Champs Camp gym where history and sweat seep from the peeling walls, Gallagher had been in roaring flow. As six of his fighters shadowboxed each other, feinting and weaving in the crowded ring, the 56-year-old had yelled out instructions. Gallagher looked every inch the proud winner of the Trainer of the Year award – which he received last month at the British Boxing awards. But no matter how hard he works, or how cleverly he tries to find a strategy to overcome the odds, Gallagher has entered dark terrain. He loves the company of his fighters and his family, and appreciates the medical experts who urge him to pay more attention to cancer than boxing, but there are moments when he is alone with the disease. 'I've only shed one tear and that was in January when I got told at the Christie,' Gallagher says of the NHS cancer centre in Manchester. 'I'd come round from the general anaesthetic and the doctor says: 'We're dealing with bowel cancer and we need another scan.'' For Gallagher, 'that was the time – those moments I had on my own. Until then I didn't think it was real. You're expecting Ant and Dec or Jeremy Beadle to say it's all a joke but I suddenly thought: 'Flipping hell, this is real.' The consultant said this would have started around 10 years ago with small polyps. They could have been removed if I'd had some tests.' Gallagher was soon back in the corner, preparing for a fight in Saudi Arabia, when the next results emerged. On a Zoom call to his consultant he said: ''I'll be back in Manchester Sunday night and I can see you Monday. But I'd rather you tell me now. I'm not a Rich Tea biscuit. I'm not going to melt and fall apart.' So he told me the extent of the cancer in the liver and since then they've found cysts on the thyroid. They'll look into that soon. But we're just getting on with it.' He pauses. 'It really is mad. Last year everyone's perception was: 'Wow, look at Gallagher, opening that Mike Tyson gym he set up in Saudi. He's there with Tyson, Ronaldo, Eminem. He had a year where we've seen Natasha Jonas winning a world title, Lawrence Okolie winning a world title. He's got all these kids coming through.' But, unbeknown to us all, he's fucking riddled with cancer.' Gallagher returns to the video call which confirmed the devastating news. 'The consultant told me about keyhole surgery but said if that won't work they'll split me open from here to here.' He gestures to a point high up on his chest and works his way down to his stomach. 'I said to him: 'Oh, that'll look good on the beach. I can tell the kids a shark attacked me years ago.' But they've not decided yet whether it'll be joint surgery, which is bowel and liver, or just bowel, or what might happen. I'm having cycles of chemo. I have a drip for three hours with the strongest chemo, and then I'm on chemo tablets every day for two weeks, then I have a week off. Then I do my fourth cycle again for three weeks.' He smiles when I say that, hearing him bellowing encouragement to his fighters this morning, an outsider would have no idea that his vitality was being drained by the chemotherapy. 'I'm blessed to be around so many good people, young people, and they've shown a lot of loyalty in staying with me. I can see why Ferguson, Wenger and all the great managers went on for years because when you're around young people you want to see them blossom. That gives you renewed energy.' Had he felt ill before he took a chance series of medical tests to check on his general health? Gallagher shakes his head. 'I had no real symptoms which is why I urge people to get tested and for the government to bring down the screening age for men.' Gallagher is resolute in his commitment to the brutal sport which has defined him for so long, but he can no longer escape cancer. 'The hardest thing was telling my mum. She had two strokes last year and I did half-joke and say: 'The race is on. Who will go first?'' He laughs and then shrugs. 'I'm a big believer that your cards are dealt before you're born. You've got to make the most of it, and I had a tough conversation with my [adult] children. Sophie and Curtis are worried. But I said to them: 'If I was to go next week, next year, two years, whenever, I can't complain about the life I've had. Think about the amount of highs and lows. I know people who live to 90 and not do half of what I've done. I've also seen you grow up into fine young adults. If there's anything to tell you, I will talk to you. But I just want you to continue your lives as normal.' It's all we can do.' Gallagher has given up so much to develop as a trainer. He admits that turning pro and leaving his job at Manchester airport, where he was a union shop steward, cost him his marriage. 'I'd come home and say: 'John Murray sparred brilliantly today.' My wife would say: 'That's good. But how much did you get paid this week?' I'd say: 'Nothing yet.' All right. The next week Matthew Macklin trained really well. She'd say: 'Good. How much did you earn this week?' Nothing again. So she said: 'You're just following an expensive hobby.' But I knew it would take years of work.' Gallagher's boxing obsession meant that he missed his father-in-law's funeral. In hindsight, doesn't that seem crazy? 'No. John Murray was getting ready for a massive fight and the only available sparring that day was at the same time. I remember going to the gym and Kerry Kayes [the nutritionist] said: 'What about the funeral?' I went: 'John needs me more than she needs me. She's got her family and everyone else around her. But he can't spar today without me.' 'I can understand why that didn't go down well at home. But Ferguson, Mourinho and Klopp have got that ruthless streak, and you need it. But [he and his wife] kept talking and the kids really turned out well.' Gallagher will have 'more X-rays in mid-April and then at the end of the month we'll find out whether the cancer has shrunk or whether we're going for a dual operation in May or June. I'm thinking: 'Great, because I can recover in the summer and be ready for September.'' Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion There is so much admirable positivity here but Gallagher does not avoid the fact that Phil Martin, his mentor and former trainer, died from cancer when he was just 44 in May 1994. We sit outside Martin's old office and Gallagher has ensured that the entire gym remains largely unchanged. At 17 he became one of Martin's few white fighters, when Moss Side was a deprived and largely African-Caribbean neighbourhood. Martin had started Champs Camp in the aftermath of the 1981 riots and the trainer influenced Gallagher in profound ways. Walking around the gym, showing me old photographs and posters, Gallagher makes it clear how precious it is to follow the philosophies he learned from Martin – who helped him become a trainer in the same way that Gallagher has inspired his former fighters Anthony Crolla and Scott Quigg to start coaching young boxers. Gallagher told me years ago how he used to visit Martin's graveside before big fights. 'I still do that today,' he confirms. 'But I also think subconsciously, although I try not to let it surface, I've been here before. Phil got diagnosed in November [1993] and he was gone [six] months later. It was in his liver and bloods so I know how aggressive it can be.' His face crumples and his eyes swim with tears when I ask if he has been thinking of Martin more than ever. 'Yeah.' Gallagher can't talk as he struggles to stop crying. 'Excuse me,' he eventually says softly. Thirty seconds later he sounds strong again. 'Before all the big fights I go see Phil [at the cemetery]. I also have a fight-night ritual where, before I leave the hotel room, I say my prayers to a few people, and that always includes Phil. I pray for all the fighters, not just my own, asking for them to come out safe and sound. I also ask Phil if he can guide me during the fight, to make sure I say the right thing at the right time. It's peaceful after I've done that.' It's also important that, despite his searing commitment to boxing, Gallagher puts his own health first. 'I'm trying to do that now. Early on I probably buried my head in the sand a little. I had training camps and big fights and just went from one to the other. It was really intense from November to March but I've got some breathing space coming up. 'Last week was the worst week so far. I've been really tired. Massive stomach cramps. But it still feels very surreal talking about it. The gym is flying and sometimes I wish I didn't know I had cancer and could carry on as normal all the time. But I'm doing all the treatment and, if it means I'm here a bit longer, then it's worth it. Most of all, everyone needs the message that you're not too young to have a stool sample at 30 or 40. I don't want anyone to be surprised in the way that I was by cancer.' We go back downstairs and Gallagher talks to his fighters – who all exude positivity and good cheer around their trainer. In such a gritty setting, and amid the bleak reality of cancer, their work together brings so much light and hope. His young boxers also offer an uplifting antidote to societal despair over toxic masculinity as they are full of kindness and purpose, good cheer and thoughtful questions. They owe so much, rather than just winning fights and titles, to their trainer. Gallagher looks around the gym he loves. He is in a difficult corner but he has so much to live for and so much more to give. There is vast experience and optimism too as Gallagher tries to live in the here and the now, no matter how bruising it feels. 'People say I'm stubborn but I'm not ignorant,' he suggests. 'I'm aware of what's gone on in the past with Phil. I've also spoken to lots of people from different walks of life who have reached out and told me about their experiences [surviving cancer]. It's been really inspiring. I've just got to enjoy it for as long as I can. I feel that more than ever.'
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Biscuits, gummies and seaweed: the Tate & Lyle boss who's moved on from sugar
A plate of Rich Tea biscuits is prominently placed in the centre of the table as Tate & Lyle chief executive Nick Hampton sits down at its swish London headquarters. His 104-year-old company's name may be synonymous with the sugar – and Golden Syrup – found on supermarket shelves, but Hampton has had a different part to play in creating one of the nation's favourite dunkers. Tate & Lyle creates a plethora of ingredients which offer an alternative to that sweet stuff – including extra fibre and sugar replacement in the biscuits. Hampton's business has existed in its current form since 2010, when its sugar arm – now known as Tate & Lyle Sugars – was sold off to American Sugar Refining for £211m, while his business remained listed on the stock market. In fact, it is the only member of the original FT-30 group of listed companies, created in 1935, still on the London stock market. 'Part of the reason for that is nothing we do today we did more than 30 years ago,' says Hampton of the business, which was formed in 1921 from a merger of two rival sugar refiners. Its origins stretch back even further, to a sugar refiner on Liverpool docks in 1859. Hampton, a slick executive who spent more than nine years at PepsiCo after a stint at management consultancy Monitor, has been at the helm for nearly seven years. He is continuing to transform the business to provide alternatives to sugar, which is being taxed and blamed in part for the UK's obesity crisis. The group sources raw foodstuffs from around the world, and creates ingredients designed to offer crunch or creaminess, add fibre, or a give a sweet taste to foodstuffs without the attendant calories. They originate from the likes of corn, tapioca, seaweed, stevia leaf and citrus peel. The group's low- and no-calorie sweeteners and fibre additives have helped remove more than 9m tonnes of sugar from people's diets since 2020, equivalent to 36 trillion calories, he says. Tate & Lyle is reformulating gummies – so children can be persuaded to take vitamins without adding sugar or gelatin – and helping make dairy-free ice-cream and crunchy, healthier biscuits. Aside from the work on Rich Tea, the group has helped reinvent McVitie's digestive biscuits and – less successfully – produce a low-sugar version of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, as well as many more projects it is shy about revealing. Tate & Lyle describes itself as an expert in sweetening, fortification and 'mouthfeel' – a rather off-putting word for what makes up over half the group's business, which is making things seem crunchy or creamy without high-calorie ingredients. Hampton has been busy since taking charge. He sold off a controlling stake in its US-based commercial sweeteners division in a $1.3bn deal in 2021, and last year acquired CP Kelco, a US producer of pectin and speciality gums, for $1.8bn. The blockbuster deal made Tate & Lyle one of the few listed British firms to acquire an American business, rather than accept a takeover from a buyer across the Atlantic. 'We've streamlined it down to a much simpler business focused in where food is going to grow,' says Hampton. 'We now need to execute on that strategy with real conviction and deliver on the growth potential.' Despite his efforts, Tate & Lyle's share price is loitering not far from the level it was at when Hampton took the reins, prompting rumours of an opportunistic bid from US private equity firm Advent late last year. A firm bid for the company – which is valued at £2.8bn – has not materialised but Hampton says the talk was 'a sign of the potential the business has', which makes him 'very determined to unlock the value' in Tate & Lyle. The share price remains depressed as investors wonder if the company may yet be flogging ingredients that are falling out of fashion, despite the rise of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Meanwhile, concerns have been raised about ultra-processed foods – found in everything from breakfast cereals to ready meals and containing a long list of unusual ingredients, linking them to poor health. Hampton gives the idea short shrift. 'The concern about ultra-processed food and its labelling is an opportunity for us, because the issue with lots of ultra-processed food is its nutritional content. It tends to be high in sugar and fat and things that maybe don't create balancing diets.' He says consumers may want a 'clean label' but their priority is more nutritious, tasty and affordable food, with concerns about unusual ingredients further down the list. Tate & Lyle's entire portfolio of ingredients stems from plants, meaning securing supplies in the face of the climate crisis and geopolitical stresses is far from guaranteed. Two years ago, for example, production of the particular type of corn it requires was down 30% in Europe, so supplies had to be shipped in from the US. Meanwhile, production of stevia in China, once Tate & Lyle's only source of the sweetening leaf, was hit by flooding. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion Now, given a combination of potential US tariffs on Chinese goods under the Trump presidency and the need for climate resilience, it is hunting for multiple locations to source and manufacture goods to manage potential shifts in trade, he says. It has signed an agreement to source stevia from Latin America that will be processed in the US. Regarding Trump, Hampton says the group is aiming to 'maintain that flexibility in the supply chain as things evolve'. 'We saw that in 2016 … there was a similar kind of challenge, and we navigated that pretty well.' Despite its London listing, Tate & Lyle is hardly a British company. None of its innovation labs are in the UK, and just 350 of its 3,300 staff worldwide are British-based – at its head office and a facility making powdered food stabiliser in Mold, north Wales. Hampton says the company is committed to remaining in the UK: 'We want our innovation centres to be close to where our customers are as food is inherently regional in nature, because of different tastes and regulatory environments.' While the deal to sell the sugar business was 15 years ago, the Tate & Lyle name has historic associations with the slave trade on which the sugar industry was once based. Founders Henry Tate and Abram Lyle were just boys when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed but it is thought likely their business did have links to the trade. Hampton says he considered changing Tate & Lyle's name after the CP Kelco deal, but did not want to lose the brand recognition outside the UK with clients and its history of improving nutrition. 'There's a huge amount of pride in the heritage of the business,' he adds. 'The name is really powerful for us and talks about the future our business, not the past. It's probably only in the UK where there's that sense of legacy on the shelves.' Age 57Family Married, three grown-up daughters, two Reading School; MA in chemistry at St John's College, Fixed pay of £848,000, plus variable pay of £ holiday advice he's been given 'Three values instilled by my parents. (1) Treat others as you'd like to be treated; (2) whatever you choose to devote your energy to, give it your best; (3) put family first.'Biggest regret 'Probably struggling consistently to put the family first.'Phrases he overuses 'There are three things …'How he relaxes 'Three things! (1) Exercise - I'm an obsessive runner and have recently discovered pilates; (2) playing (only golf now) and watching sport; (3) family – happily, we still see a lot of the girls.'
