Won't somebody please think of the Gentleman's Relish?

With the world on fire from Ukraine to the Middle East and the global economy teetering on the brink of collapse, our right wing media is laser-focused on the issue of the day: the fate of a niche fish spread.

The Daily Telegraph, Spectator and GB News have this week worked themselves into a lather over the news that AB World Foods is to cease the production of Gentleman’s Relish which, rather than being an entry in Viz’s Profanisaurus, is a pungent anchovy-based condiment. Sales have plummeted in recent years and AB says it is no longer commercially viable.

Just an inevitable victim of the market economy? Not for the loony right, who appear to equate it with the ravens leaving the Tower of London.

The story was broken by the Spectator’s Olivia Potts, who described the little-known foodstuff as “a British institution” on the basis of evidence like “Jessica Mitford chose it as her luxury item on her 1977 episode of Desert Island Discs”. “It has been available in the House of Lords dining rooms but for how much longer?,” fretted Potts. “Online supermarkets and delis are showing it as out of stock. What is going on?”

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Over in the Telegraph, deputy comment editor and woke-basher Michael Mosbacher – last month seen fulminating over the scrapping of hereditary peers – was lamenting “a cherished part of our culinary heritage”. Under the headline “For the good of Britain, let’s save Gentleman’s Relish”, he recounted an anecdote no doubt all of us have experienced: being fed the paste as a boy while doing the Telegraph crossword with the 18th Duke of Valderano.

“The accompaniment to this was always tea and buttered crumpets richly spread with Gentleman’s Relish, alongside the occasional surreptitious glass of Rioja – presented to us by Honor, the Duchess,” he recalls. “I will always fondly remember those afternoons, and the taste of the salty paste will forever be associated with them in my mind.”

Calling for the charitable Garfield Weston Foundation to step in, Mosbacher questions: “Gentleman’s Relish is every bit as much part of Britain’s heritage as is the British Museum. Could not a small part of its munificence reprieve this part of our culinary patrimony?”

The campaign has also been taken up with enthusiasm by GB News political editor Christopher Hope, whose viewers are no doubt regular consumers of a condiment which until last year cost £14.95 a jar at Fortnum & Mason. “I have a bottle of some of it in my fridge,” he told his audience.

Now an official campaign to save the obscure spread has been launched by Ameer Kotecha, a former diplomat, with the backing of Spectator editor Michael Gove. “The parent company ABF must reconsider,” harrumphed the Tory peer solemnly. Good to know he has a new driving purpose after the roaring success of his Brexit!