Economies rise and fall, but cakes stand tall

I am doing some work for the London School of Economics. This week staff cock a snook at the global economic meltdown with a fundraising cake sale and tea party, organised by Rose in the Student Services Centre. I donate a couple of pieces of Tupperware for the raffle, including the Expressions Rectangular Server you can see in the bottom right of the picture, bearing an oozy lemon drizzle cake.

I also go along to a meeting of the Fulham WI , and will dropping in on their sisters in North West London next month. Watch this space for a report.

Tupperware in my Seoul

In Seoul this week I arrange to stay for a few days with a local family. Since it was around Easter when I left London for Korea, I take them gifts of Lindt chocolate bunnies. Not the most practical thing to transport across the world in my suitcase via the baggage hold and bus transfers, but what better protection than a Tupperware FridgeSmart. The FridgeSmart also helps me bring back some unique Korean foodie souvenirs without crushing the packaging. Tupperware Oysters are handy too: one for my contact lenses, one for the little brushes that my dentist insists I use to clean in the gaps.

I don't get to see the Tupperware kimchi keeper I have often heard about, and which is unique to Tupperware Korea. It is used to store the ubiquitous pickled fermented cabbage that is so central to Korean life, it even has >its own museum in Seoul.

There is an unexpected Tupperware sighting too. At the closing night of the International Women's Film Festival in Seoul I saw a short film called Too Bitter To Love, by a Korean film maker who calls herself Gone. When a schoolgircl character reached for her lunch, I chuckled to see it was in a Tupperware Square Round.

Plastic ware, plastic hair

My first blog of the year. That's shameful. Although I haven't really been doing a lot of Tupperware recently, life has sort of got in the way.

I did recently respond to a party request from Syd, a transplanted Iowan who is now settled in London. She and her friends love any excuse to dress up, and so I bussed it over to Shoreditch one Sunday evening for a glamtastic Tupperware shindig.

Syd and her friends really make an occasion of it, with a dress code that is pitched somewhere between Desperate Housewives, Tales of the City and Valley of the Dolls. I am not sure which was more synthetic, the Tupperware, the outfits, or my wig.

Thanks to Syd's other half Kate, who has allowed me to pinch all these photos from her ravishing selection on Facebook, and which mean I don't need to write much.




The buffet was eye-popping and would have made Fanny Cradock proud:

Even I joined in the dress-up fun by dusting off my "Elton" wig, which last saw action at a (non-dress-up) party thrown by my friend Michael. At that party, no-one had batted an eyelid at my preposterous hair-don't, even when I took it off at the end of the night when my newly shorn head got a bit itchy underneath. I heard later that people assumed I was having chemo, and they were too polite to laugh.

特百惠 = Tupperware

I have to say, Tupperware's Chinese website looks fantastic. In comparison, the Tupperware UK website has been looking a little tired until recently, but there has been an interesting development this very week.

You could have knocked me down with a feather when I discovered that the current UK Tupperware catalogue is now available to browse online (see below). There is a very cool page-turning effect! You can do close-ups! You can rest your mouse on any item for more information! See for yourself. There is no facility to order online: you still need to contact your local consultant to order. So if you are one of my London punters, let me know if you need anything.


I am always interested in how Tupperware varies around the world, how both the products and other aspects of Tupperware seem to always fit in with local enthusiasms and culture.

In China, as this interesting article explains, they do not have Tupperware consultants like me, who sell Tupperware through home parties. That form of private enterprise is frowned up on politically. Instead, the Tupperware company has allowed "entrepreneurial storefronts" to open in China, in other words a franchised Tupperware shop. There were around 1900 outlets across the country in 2005.

My friend James is just back from China, and he took this photo for me of a store in Suzhou, near Shanghai. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you will see some familiar items in the window. The Chinese name for Tupperware, which you can see on the storefront, is 特百惠. This translates as "Hundred Benefit".

If I read the Babelfish translation of the franchise info correctly, it appears that a franchise costs from 60,000 yuan which is around £5000. However that may be wrong. An online translation can only give you the gist. Here is what it tells me the Chinese Tupperware website has to say about how to tell real Tupperware from fake:

Outward appearance   The outward appearance is very similar, but the end product is rough, common hand phenomena and so on has the fragments, to blow. And the light-admitting quality is bad, the pigment distributes non-uniform, or has slight defects and so on spot, gas spray, air bubble.

Smell   The majority has the irritating the nose revertex stink or the uncomforting unusual smell.

Function   Various types product cannot achieve the function which completely hundred benefit products have especially: Like seal, antidrip, moisture-proof and so on. Moreover after heating up, like the release toxin, is very big to the human body health danger.

"Absolutely, Vanessa!"

I won't hear a word against Vanessa Feltz. I know she has made some dodgy decisions about her professional appearances, her clothes and her lovers, but that only endears her to me, who has often made the same mistakes. Her daily phone-in on BBC London 94.9 shows that she is professional, clever, funny, self-deprecating, articulate and genuine.

On her Saturday show this week, one of the topics is Tupperware. There have been newspaper reports that in these credit-crunch times, people are going back to packed lunches, and sales of lunch boxes are up 40%. After an Australian Londoner phones in, saying she cannot get Tupperware here and is reduced to trawling charity shops for her fix, I decide to phone in and set the record straight (and maybe get a bit of business).

When I speak to Vanessa's researcher, it turns out that she has been looking for me all morning. As the Tupperware consultant for London, she was hoping I could add something cogent to the discussion. I end up doing a 10-minute interview. I also say "Absolutely!" way too much.

Tupperware in fashion

Last April, I blogged about my guest appearance at Timberlina's Bingo Pub Night at London's Royal Vauxhall Tavern. This week we team up again to bring a touch of Tupperware to a swanky party during London Fashion Week. Various celebrities (and Peaches Geldof) have been invited to decorate a beach hut, which is displayed at the party at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. The huts will be auctioned, and the proceeds given to the celeb designer's chosen charity. For some reason, Timberlina and I are invited to occupy the floral beach hut designed by singer Alesha Dixon, where we will demonstrate Tupperware as people arrive at the party. As the publicity says, "Join Ms T for a glass of something as she embarks on a new career tangent as a freelance Tupperware consultant with her mentor for the evening, Andrew".

It's a more starry event than my usual parties, and many of the guests are pictured arriving or leaving in the papers the next day. Duncan James and Tara Palmer-Tompkinson are there, and Rhys Ifans, Roisin Murphy, Mark Ronson and Mika glide by our hut. A shockingly bony Lady Victoria Hervey has a 3-person camera crew in tow all evening. I talk Tupperware with Cleo Rocos, who takes two catalogues. Timberlina has to explain to me who keen browser Patrick Wolf is, and that the polite posh girl called Morwenna who buys a Mini-Max is a famous catwalk model.

I used to work with fashion students, and every fashion party and show I ever went to was total chaos. Crowds cramming to get in, and not being allowed in for no apparent reason. Tonight's party was no exception. Lots of ticket waving. But Timberlina and I have fun, and someone brings us a bottle of Taittinger champagne which we sip all evening from Tupperware dripless straw tumblers.

Fashion people are not great customers, they expect to get everything for free or in a goody bag. But it was a hoot, and who knows where these things may lead.

Robbed by East End villains

Please look closely at the the item in the photo above, top right. That is a set of Tiwi Ice Tups, the classic Tupperware product for making home-made ice lollies. If a dishevelled and evil-smelling man approaches you on the streets of East London, and offers to sell you a set of Tiwi Ice Tups, that will not be me. Rugby tackle him to the ground, grab the Ice Tups, and contact me immediately. Let me explain.

The organisers of the annual St Barnabus Community Fete in Bow invite me to be part of their event this year. It pretty much pours with rain all day, but I have a prime spot next to the spectacular cake stall (below right), and I can bask in the glory of their amazing array of rock cakes, fairy cakes and brownies.

Business is as brisk as the weather allows, and I sell quite a lot of Tupperware. At one point two members of what I shall generously call the street drinking community shuffle over and start fingering my products. Distracted by another customer, I just catch the Can Opener going to one guy's bag. "I'll have that back please", I bark. He gives a fake-puzzled look. "The can opener you just put in your bag. I need it back". He hands it back, muttering something, and lurches on the to cake stall and asks for a free cake.

A little while later, someone asks about the Ice Tups and I say "Oh yes, a classic, they are right here... oh." Robbed! Later still I notice that a Universal Peeler has gone too. Either the guy who took the can opener also took the other stuff without me noticing, or my stall is being staked out by a latter-day Fagin and his gang. I report it to the organisers, and there follows a hilarious sweep of the fete, with strapping South African security guards occasionally beckoning me over to ID a possible wino with a Tupperware habit.

There were a couple of occasions when, a la Albert Square market, I asked one of the cake women to "Watch my stall" while I fetched a coffee, so maybe it was my own fault. Bleedin' East Enders.

I have been in touch with members of the East End Women's Institute and will be running a Tupperware party for them in December. I am delighted to see that they are running the tea tent at the Community Fete, and I go an introduce myself. I get a big hug from Sorella Le Var, Vice President and Food Champion. She has popped up on television this summer advising on food storage and preservation. My kinda gal!

A catwalk of cakes

It has been a very quiet year so far. Most weeks, a couple of people contact me to order some Tupperware, but I have not been asked to do a party for ages. Then all of a sudden, two come at once. I could say it never rains but it pours, but it is a glorious weekend, a bleak London sun glinting on my fine kitchenware.

First of all, I take the Northern Line to Highgate to meet Sylvia and her friends. Sylvia and her most enthusiastic guests hail from Germany originally, and it really does seem to be true that German folk adore their Tupperware. Anya doesn't even have a house to put it in at the moment, but she stocks up for her new kitchen, ready to equip it later in the summer when she moves in.

Sylvia is having a bit of a kaffee und kuchen afternoon, and has fashioned a sort of catwalk for her ravishing cakes, using cans of tomatoes and some MDF. It is a lot more elegant than it sounds. A rhubarb cake, a marble cake, and a cake jewelled with fat plums all strike a pose, surrounded by key pieces of Tupperware. Sylvia herself gets well into the retro swing by sporting a fabulous 70's red floral maxi-dress from her mum's collection. Tall, and with long dark hair, Sylvia in her period frock reminds me of the very poised and chic German women who used to fascinate me on our family package holidays to the Franco-era Costa Brava in the early 70s.

I love the way the friendly guests don't take themselves (or me) too seriously, but take their Tupperware buying very seriously indeed. I am dispatched at the end of the party with a sheaf of orders in one hand, and an Oyster full of cakes in the other [right].

I run stalls at fetes now and again, when I feel like it. Over the years I have been rained on, shat on by birds, and made to hide my Tupperchef knife for fear of arrest. But it's nearly always a fun day, and generally I get a couple of parties out of every fete. This Sunday I have agreed to run a stall just a few hundred yards from my house, at Trinity Church Square in the Borough area of London. It is the Open Gardens Square weekend, during which well-tended little private squares all over London are opened up for the day to pleasure seekers and nosey parkers. There are often special one-off events taking place in the squares, like today's fete, which has a few stalls, some kids making 99s, a jazz band and a beer tent. I man my stall from 11 till 6, and it's a leisurely day. I am more interested in putting the word out about parties than in actually shifting any products, but for once I do sell quite a bit. My neighbour in the square is the Chickenbus stall, where Eleanor and her husband sell fair trade crafts and decorative items from Latin America. We while away the afternoon planning ways of building our little businesses.

Maureen from Johannesburg is already there as I arrive to set up my stall. She has previously stumbled across my blog, and is thrilled that Central London's only Tupperware consultant is her neighbour. Maureen and her husband are in London for a year, staying in a company flat over by Tower Bridge. I gather their kitchen storage leaves quite a lot to be desired, and I am happy to help Maureen upgrade.

Some very enthusiastic browsers get quite beside themselves at the sight of so much Tupperware in one place, and I am hoping to be running some local parties before too long.

Journalist Zoe Williams reviews a book in The Guardian this week called The Kitchen Revolution which is all about making the most of seasonal produce, cooking ahead and leftovers. She comments that

We have quite a bit of this left over (even though I've halved the measurements to cater for two), and for about the sixth time in the week, which makes it the sixth time in my entire life, I find myself thinking how much I'd like some quality Tupperware.

Needless to say, a catalogue is on its way to Zoe via The Guardian.