The Taste of the Crowd

McDonald's have invented a Chicken Big Mac. Instead of two of their famous "all beef patties" there are two breaded chicken discs. It's a Chicken Burger with another chicken burger in it, then. Only a few days after this culinary revelation - an extra piece of chicken, remember - was introduced, McDonald's were forced to remove it from their menus. Not for the reasons you're thinking, I think there are things we all think about McDonald's, and it's not that.

 It's because they were too popular. 

It was due excessive demand. 

More people wanted a chicken burger with an extra breaded chicken medallion, than McDonald's had anticipated. The company couldn't have imagined the sheer popular desperation for a chicken burger with an extra piece of chicken in it and, now I think of it, there's an extra bit of bap in a Big Mac too, so the Chicken Big Mac probably has one of those too, a sort of bready perineum, a barse in a bap. 

I mean, I find this incredible. Full disclosure: I have eaten a McDonald's burger before. Not for some years now, but it has happened. I was even papped the last time I was in a McDonald's "restaurant" by a friend who thought my buying a burger was intrinsically funny, or shaming me on social media with a photograph of me blearily ordering a cheese burger was intrinsically funny, at any rate. I had had some beer and was hungry, and it hasn't happened since. (The buying of a takeaway burger. I HAVE had plenty of beer since then). So, I know of what I speak, I've shaken the tree and eaten of it's fruit, and I can tell you as an expert witness that McDonald's food is not all that. It's not even as good as Burger King's burger, which has identifiable bits of food in it, though you can't eat one without getting covered in stink. You'll be smelling that mayo all day, no matter how many moist towlettes you rub yourself down with. 

So I'm baffled when I go to my local Tesco supermarket, which has a McDonald's drive-thru in it, and see cars snaking around the car park at all hours of the day and night. I know the Northern Irish people eat more takeaways than I'm used to, I think I had one takeaway last year which is possibly lower than average, but do they EVER cook? Queuing in your car for an indifferent toasted roll can only end in bland disappointment, surely?  

But I'm wrong, as always. The chicken Big Mac - a McChicken Sandwich with an extra bit of bread and chicken in it - sold out due to it's incredible popularity. They just couldn't make enough of them for the voracious, novelty obsessed public. They really, really wanted to see what a McChicken Sandwich (freely available since 1980, by the way) with an extra bit of bread and another "breaded cutlet"* would taste like. They can't just imagine, they must know and know in their tens of thousands.    

This is why I'm rubbish at "Pointless". I know the answers (except Geography and the Periodic Table) but I can never second guess what the GREAT BRITISH PUBLIC will value. I'm not at home to popular delusions and the madness of crowds. I don't know why people like the rubbish they like. I can't explain "Starstruck" or "The Masked Singer" or "Scripted Reality Television". I'll never be a man of the people. I'm squirreled away in my own little world, surrounded by the stupid, unpopular things I think are good: the films of William Castle, the wines of Jean Loran, the album A Satyred Love by Rob, Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse, and the Dr Who episode The Leisure Hive. Not because it's particularly good, but because it starts on Brighton Beach in 1980, and nine year old me is three miles away from Lalla Ward and Tom Baker, and utterly oblivious. None of them are the best examples of the sort of things they are, but they are good, and they are the things I prefer. My favourites. 

I miss the McDonald's Mushroom Swiss. Now that was a tasty burger. **

*This is McDoald's own term for their crunchy flesh disc. 

**My favourite ever burger was The Blue Cheese burger from a place called Sam's in Brighton. I went looking for it the last time I was in Brighton, but there was no sign anywhere.