The stuff from before on NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown ...

No, I wasn't looking for you

Lionel Richtea and his mates, Simon le-Bourbon, Abraham Lincoln, Vanilla Iced Gem and Sid Viscount

We have seen rather too much of Lionel Richtea over the last fortnight, site regulars, friends, family, people I've never heard of and our literary agent all sent him to us with their best wishes. His creator FiST got in touch to say sorry and to let us know that Lionel is not alone. So before you reach for that forward icon in your email package, its OK we've seen them. Part of Lionel stared life as a biscuit image on our site, FiST used it to make himself an amusing avatar for the www.no-future.com message board from where he quickly escaped and started doing the rounds via email. Cyberspace is a very odd place where a bunch of pixels that you made several years ago can suddenly turn up in your mail box in your own personal spam deluge. A very similar thing happend in the Star Trek the movie when Voyager turned up as giant robot the size of a planet after falling out of a black hole. Well I can see the similarities. Mind you they never said how they got rid of V-ger after they calmed it down, "Alright you've touched the hand of the creator, now shove off".

NCOTAASD wins a proper award

Well it was off the glamourous east end of London for the Wife and I last night to the first eMap Fanzine awards. eMap are the people behind tons of different magazines, like 'The Face', 'FHM', 'Heat', 'Empire' and 'Steam Railway'. We had a nice cup of tea on the 17:45 to Kings Cross and a HobNob flapjack, so we hit the event all guns blazing. We were thrilled to come top in the Webzine category, and also thrilled to find out that we are a 'Webzine', something which we were largely ignorant of till now. At one point we were offered a lovely bottle of Champagne to celebrate with, and I think we were meant to open it up in a triumphant Formula 1 sort of way. However, I said that we would take it home with us and probably have it Friday evening whilst watching telly.

That's not any of your old GIF files, its a proper thing that can go on our shelves

Huntley & Palmers resurrected

After an absence of more than ten years the Huntley & Palmer brand is once again to found on our shelves. Huntley & Palmers of course dates back to the early part of the nineteenth century and is one of the pillars of the British biscuit industry, with a whole museum devoted to their past in Reading their birthplace. The brand had passed on to Jacobs, who had effectively wound it down although continuing to make many H&P originated products such as Iced Gems.	Nice new logo
Huntley & Palmers' products became famous in 137 countries and, even today, their reputation for baking unique, top-quality products, such as Milk & Honey, Breakfast Biscuits and Chocolate Olivers is fondly remembered. The brand's packaging also achieved unsurpassed standards of excellence with its presentation tins and promotional posters. Many of these can still be seen today at the Reading Museum. The new MD of H&P Nigel McCrea acquired the Huntley & Palmers name whilst working as a director at Jacobs, and is relaunching the new H&P as a luxury brand. The company is exclusively targetting the speciality and fine-food sector, including delicatessens, major food and department stores, airport duty-free, food-service, hotels, mail-order, hampers and internet sales. Initial products include "When Taste Matters", an assortment of bite-sized sweet biscuits. "Not Just For Cheese", an assortment of biscuits and wafer-thins. "Chequers", a box of mint crisp chocolates, wrapped in two different colour foils, with a board designed into the pack, so you can enjoy an after-dinner chocolate whilst playing a light-hearted game of draughts and "Brandy & Walnut Christmas Pudding", described simply as the richest traditional pudding you can buy. Of course we put in a plea to Nigel on behalf of all those NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown readers who long to see the Milk & Honey, and maybe the Chocolate Bath Oliver resurrected too.