Nigella Lawson has issued an impassioned paean to the Greggs sausage roll, amid reviews of a banger-based dust-up that threatened to solid a shadow over her look within the bakery chain’s first ever Christmas advert.
Greggs confirmed on Sunday that the movie star chef and cookbook writer had agreed to star in its inaugural Christmas promotion, through which Lawson will purr over such delicacies as vegan festive bakes.
It adopted an anxious await the nation, amid reviews that the industrial relationship was fraying after Lawson refused level clean to deploy her honeyed prose in assist of the chain’s sausage rolls.
Greggs stated the reviews had been “inaccurate”, including that meals author was solely ever recruited to advertise the Christmas menu and had by no means been requested to endorse its pastry-clad bangers.
Lawson stated: “As a longtime fan of Greggs, and particularly their sausage rolls, I’m thrilled to be collaborating with them to have a good time the return of the enduring Christmas menu.”
The promotion will carry collectively two British family names identified for his or her associations with former chancellors of the exchequer.
The TV chef is the daughter of the late former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, whereas one in every of his successors, George Osborne, suffered some of the chastening moments of his political profession when he dared to tackle Greggs.
Osborne introduced plans to use VAT to sizzling takeaway meals in his notorious “omnishambles” finances of 2012, ultimately abandoning a measure dubbed the “pasty tax” after heated opposition from Greggs and others.
The primary glimpses of the Greggs advert characteristic Lawson, identified for her indulgent dishes and sensual flip of phrase, in paroxysms over Greggs’ Christmas menu.
Lawson, whose internet price has been estimated at greater than £15m, is proven returning to a house that includes a Christmas tree bedecked with Greggs baubles, earlier than describing the “rapturous riot of flavour” of the chain’s festive bake.
She says: “Succulent filling, creamy sauce, all wrapped up within the flakiest of flaky pastries, in a single or each palms, say good day to the Greggs festive bakes,” earlier than taking a chew of 1.
Within the remaining scene, viewers are proven a kitchen desk laden with gadgets from the Greggs Christmas menu, ending with a platter of vegan festive bakes.
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The festive bake prices £1.95, about 15% of the present retail worth of Lawson’s 2020 cookbook, Prepare dinner, Eat, Repeat: Elements, Recipes, and Tales, relying on the bookshop.
Greggs’ courtship of Lawson continues a latest technique of pairing its no-nonsense baked items with the finer issues in life.
Final month, it launched its first champagne bar through which prospects can wash down steak bakes with a £75 glass of Louis Roederer Cristal.
The bar opened in Fenwick’s retailer in Newcastle, town the place Greggs has its headquarters, on 24 October and can stay open till the tip of December.
It follows the primary Greggs “advantageous eating” bistro on the identical location final 12 months, which served its common festive bake alongside duck fats roasties, smoked pancetta, chestnuts and sprouts to greater than 8,000 prospects over a single month.
