When 18,000 cheese lovers said that they would be turning up to Borough Market in London for its annual Evening of Cheese, the organisers should have realised it would be, ahem, whey too popular.
What followed on Wednesday night was far from the billed “highlight of the food lover’s year”. It was a night of chaos.
One visitor said it had taken two hours to get three pieces of cheese. Another left promptly after being confronted by six-deep queues at stalls.
After being “elbowed in the boob and backpacked in the face” another departed. To rub salt in the wound there was an anti-dairy protest by vegan activists. They confronted customers with placards suggesting that the cows providing the cheese had been raped and their children stolen, before being murdered when their bodies were too tired.
“Mega cheesed off about tonight,” one angry attender wrote on the Evening of Cheese Facebook page. “The sellers just out to milk it.”
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“I thought when I got there I could breeze round the stalls but was left feeling blue,” one said while another suggested: “Must do feta.”
To the organisers’ credit, they did not say “hard cheese”. They promised to learn and said they would take “feedback into account for next year”.
Darren Henaghan, the market’s managing director, said: “Whilst it went off without incident, we were saddened to hear that a small minority of visitors were disappointed.”
Be quick to make the changes, he was urged. The year will be pasteurised before you know it.