OPINION: Why the butter ball is not making a resurgence anytime soon

Why is it that not so long ago almost every elderly aunt or uncle you knew had an endless supply of butter balls secreted on their person? Real terrorist threats to healthy dentition.

I have a particular problem with butter balls. They are horrible, liable to crack your jaw and I remember a now long dearly departed aunt repeatedly sucking on them at church, and offering me one to sweeten a tedium I knew could only be endured with stony faced compliance.

There is no amount of sexy or stylish or slick advertising, not even a nationwide campaign with Kate Moss sporting one between her teeth, that could bring back the butter ball in any way that would ever make it fashionable or appealing again to those beneath octogenarian status. Nobody but nobody could make a butter ball appealing. Butter balls are finished unless you have dentures and are in a nursing home.

The only way you might be able to justify its existence is if you could fire one through a pea shooter to strategically land between the brows of a mortal enemy, rendering them momentarily dizzy if done with force.

And, speaking of odious confections, next up is the absolutely foul invention known as The Fisherman’s Friend. Now, I can only describe what this mentholated lozenge does as a kind of airway irrigation method more extreme than a spiritual exorcism.

Apparently Thatcher was fond of them to soothe her voice after too much public speaking, and to this day Emmanuel Macron has a fetish for them. Sacre bleu. I would rather drink Night Nurse or Benilyn than endure the pain and bitterness of the so-called Fisherman’s Friend, the confection that basically rips your throat out.

The lozenges were originally developed by pharmacist James Lofthouse in 1865 to relieve various respiratory problems suffered by fishermen working in the extreme conditions of the Northern deep-sea fishing grounds.

Really? Because I feel that I have incurred a respiratory problem anytime I have made the mistake of ingesting one.

The lozenges of horror are relatively unchanged since their creation. Personally I think they should be consigned to history along with the butter ball.