Sixty-six years after Winston Churchill spoke of Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States in a speech he called The Sinews of Peace, the bond has been tested by pieces of sinew or whatever other offcuts go into the Great American Hot Dog.
David Cameron found himself mocked in the US after committing a gastronomic gaffe while watching a college basketball game in Ohio with Barack Obama. The Prime Minister, forced into eating a hot dog for the sake of future intelligence sharing, appeared to commit the solecism of putting ketchup, rather than mustard, on the meat.
This should have been covered in the Foreign Office briefing. Has he not seen Sudden Impact, in which Clint “Dirty Harry” Eastwood sneers at a detective whose decision to put ketchup on his hot dog “makes me sick to my stomach”? Or what about Bad News Bears, in which Tanner Boyle says, “The only people who put ketchup on hot dogs are mental patients and Texans”?
There are some states where freedom of expression is allowed when it comes to coating your wiener, but not in Ohio and even less so in Obama’s native Illinois where there are restaurants that will put a photo of you on their Wall of Shame if you ask for ketchup. You would get more sympathy if you expressed support for a woman’s right to abortion at a Tea Party convention.
Cameron has form in getting it wrong vis-à-vis hot dogs. On a visit to Mayor Bloomberg in New York in 2010, he asked a street vendor for a plain frankfurter — not even onions — and instantly lost face. At the basketball game he must have remembered to add a condiment, but no one had briefed him as to which one.
Advertisement
News broke when a student sitting three rows behind the leaders tweeted: “I believe David Cameron chose ketchup over mustard for his hot dog. Adjust your UK stock projections accordingly.” Yet the photographs are unclear, showing no sign of red sauce and perhaps even a dab of yellow. Is this a smear campaign? Maybe America should be more concerned that Obama was clearly talking with his mouth full.
The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, part of the American Meat Institute, has published advice on hot-dog etiquette that should be printed out, maybe even laminated to protect against spilt sauce, and given to all visiting world leaders.
They include such key rules as “always dress the dog, not the bun”, sun-dried tomato buns “are considered gauche”, never use cutlery and take no more than five bites (seven is permissible for foot-long franks), but the most important advice for Cameron is “don’t use ketchup on your hot dog after the age of 18”.
As food faux pas go on overseas tours, this is not quite up there with the first President Bush vomiting into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, but Cameron needs to fight back.
The next time Obama is over here, the President should be taken for a Cornish tea in the hope that he commits the gaffe of spreading cream on his scone before the jam.