The Tupperware Man

If you can remember the 1960s kitchen, you weren't there

2012-01-09T22:47:00.003Z

Last summer's Vintage at Southbank festival was great fun. A blogger called Kathryn took these great photos of my vintage 1960s kitchen set and posted them to her blog Yes I Like That. Thanks Kathryn for letting me re-post them here.

Green genius

2011-11-03T23:02:00.001Z

I was very pleased with myself. I had scored a big bag of beautiful Hass avocadoes from my local market, and all of them perfectly ripe and ready, not the solid bullets you sometimes find. Bargain price too.

I have played with many guacamole recipes over the years, and my signature version is what I call "Japamole". It includes some wasabi, the brain-tingling Japanese mustard, and a few other little Japanese touches. With my bargain bag of avocadoes, I would make a big bowl of it, and take it with crudites and tortilla chips round to my neighbour Erika's that evening. She has visitors from a Finland and a few of us were having an impromptu Saturday night get together, all bringing a dish.

Back home with my haul from the market, I started to halve, peel and stone the avocadoes. To remove the stone, I do the cheffy trick of a karate-chop with the sharp edge of a large knife, so it is slightly embedded in the stone, then twist and lift the stone out. The avocadoes looked amazing, just perfectly ripe and luscious.

Text message. It's Erika, checking what everyone is bringing tonight. "My special guacamole!", I text back. Reply: "Hannah's already bringing her husband's guacamole, can u do something else?" Something else?! "Okay, no problem!", I lie. So I have eight large avocadoes already halved in a bowl, and a potato masher in my hand. Hannah's husband Mauricio is Mexican. I can't compete. But I certainly need to do something with all these avocadoes. And quick.

This is definitely a time to turn to my favourite cookbook -- the internet. I wipe the avocado from my hands, and start scrolling through page after page of avocado recipes:

* Guacamole. Out of the question.
* Salads. Too many other ingredients I don't have.
* Soups. No good for a buffet.
* Cleansing face masks. Oh for Heavens sake.

Then I see it. Avocado lime ice cream. As well as my mashed avocadoes, I just need lime juice, honey and whipping cream. Check. I have all three. Genius.

For every two avocadoes, I add 120 ml of lime juice and the same quantity of runny honey, and blitz in my blender. I then fold in 240ml of cream and pour the elegant pale green mix into my trusty Tupperware Jel-Ring mould, then slide it into the freezer and hope for the best.

Needless to say, Hannah's husband's guacamole was delicious, with a lovely spiky touch of chilli with the creamy avocado. People knew I had brought dessert, but until I unmoulded the ring of pale green ice cream, no-one had a clue what it was. I quickly toasted some desiccated coconut in a dry pan, and sprinkled it on top as I scooped the ice cream into bowls.

Some people were a little reluctant, not wanting to be impolite, but also not very keen to try this unusual ice cream. But not for long. It was a real triumph. They really really loved it.

Next day, I had to send the recipe around on Facebook, and every couple of months since then, someone lets me know they have made it themselves. The Finnish guests couldn't get enough of it, and the recipe has now gone global!

Dare I try it with wasabi?

You will always find me in the kitchen at festivals

2011-07-20T00:03:00.008+01:00

I just heard today from the distributors in Dublin that I was the top-selling UK Tupperware consultant for the second quarter of 2011. Given that six months ago I had quit selling Tupperware after the UK distributor went out of business, I am very pleased with myself for doing so well. Thanks very much indeed to customers past, present and future, for your orders and your enthusiasm.

And it's full steam ahead for what is my most exciting Tupperware adventure yet -- my 3-day 1960 Tupperware party at the Vintage at Southbank festival next week. I was frankly daunted to be shown a 4 metre square blank space in the Royal Festival Hall last month, in which I have to create a kitchen set from scratch. I work alone, and I have pretty much zero budget, but I decided to face the challenge. The basic premise is that I am re-staging the first UK Tupperware party, which was in Weybridge in 1960, but I reckon I will be taking a lot of liberties with the period detail. But not only does my set need to showcase the Tupperware, and look more or less authentically 1960, but it needs to hold its own next to the professionally-designed and dressed living room set right next to me, hosted by Foyles bookshop. Sorry, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit out of sheer terror. The festival organisers have trusted me to do a good job of it, despite my limited experience and resources, and I am determined to pull it off.

I have sourced some great period kitchen furniture from eBay -- although some of it will be going straight back onto eBay the day after the festival! I bought this lovely 1959 kitchen dresser, restored to its original glory, and I think I will be keeping it. I have ordered a roll of checkerboard lino for an authentic vintage kitchen feel, and I am trying to work out how to lay it without ruining the Festival Hall's wooden floor. Afterwards, I may well lay it in my own bathroom and kitchen. As well as all the Tupperware to dress the set and demonstrate for the punters, riffing on the classics I have been blogging here the last month or so, the lovely people at my local vintage shop, Radio Days in Waterloo, have been kind enough to lend me some original 1950s and 1960s items. These include a fantastic baby blue rotary telephone, a politically incorrect minstrel tea-cosy, some late 50s/early 60s magazines, and other gems. My sister Lois will be the party hostess, and she has bought a perfect 1950s frock for the occasion.

It is very exciting, and something new for me, to see my presence at the festival mentioned in the media:

The official Vintage Festival blog had a piece about me. Okay, I pretty much wrote it for them, but they published it with some brilliant retro graphics.
The Festival team have created the lovely ad for my party you can see in this blog post, featuring the Jel N Serve, which I will indeed be demonstrating live. At that link, scroll all the way down for the ad. Those are not my manicured hands, byt the way...
Time Out London's preview of the festival mentions my party as a highlight. Thanks!
The charming Kiera Buckley-Jones of BBC Homes and Antiques magazine is dressing the Foyles living room set next to mine, and is looking forward to us being neighbours.

I will be in the ticketed performance area inside the Royal Festival Hall, not in the public market area outside, but I do hope to have a chance to work the crowds outside in the market too, and hand out a few catalogues.

I am nervous, but definitely excited.

The art of Tupperware

2011-07-12T15:51:00.010+01:00

I am thrilled that Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway have asked me to organise a Tupperware party as part of their Vintage at Southbank festival. For the weekend of 29 to 31 July, London's Royal Festival Hall will be transformed into a warren of venues and performance spaces, to celebrate and showcase British style and design of the the last seven decades. There is an amazing programme of music, films, performances, events, workshops, food and drink, and more; and there will be a vintage marketplace outside the RFH, which is open to all.

I will not, as you might expect, be in the marketplace. The Hemingways have instead asked me to create a retro kitchen set inside the ticketed area of the Royal Festival Hall, into which I will invite festival punters to join me and my hostess at a Tupperware party that celebrates fifty years of Tupperware as a classic piece of domestic product design. Very exciting, and quite daunting, but I am delighted and excited to be involved.

This is not the first time that my Tupperware parties have collided with the world of art and performance. In September 2008, I blogged about a Tupperware party hosted by bearded drag queen Miss Timberlina at a London Fashion Week party, in a beach hut decorated by Alesha Dixon. Then at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I supplied Tupperware products and after-show sales for US Tupperware queen Dixie Longate. Sadly, my blog was on hiatus at that time, so there are no photos or reports from Dixie's show, but if she makes it back to the UK for more shows, I will be at her beck and call and will blog it all.

One performance for which I was actually paid as an artiste was Gay Shame Goes Girly, an event organised by the Duckie collective in 2009 as a tongue-in-cheek alternative to London's Gay Pride. A celebration of all things female, or matters perceived to be culturally female or feminine, I was brought in to do Tupperware Lady training. I prowled the event in my Tupperware pinny, with a tottering tower of Tupperware all Velcro-ed together, looking for likely recruits, of any gender. I used the official Tupperware training manual to ensure that each potential Lady had clean nails, had their hair off their face, and that they could do a decent product demonstration to their friends. Successful candidates became part of my sales force for the evening, for which I gave them a business card and a complimentary piece of Tupperware to demonstrate and keep.

Most recently, Goldsmiths fine art students Miguel Pacheco and Isaac Muñoz asked me to be part of their gallery show at the College. It was a performance assignment, but they had decided to get someone else to do the performance for them: my good self. I did a 20-minute potted party in the white gallery space, with a totally straight face, and without any concessions to the venue. I think an art critic would call it a transgressive interactive performance piece: as well as demonstrating some student-friendly Tupperware products, I drew a raffle, put a tutor in a gingham pinny as my hostess, and encouraged the international student audience to give Tupper-monials about their favourite products from their mothers' kitchens back home in Lisbon, Frankfurt, Budapest and Rio. At the end of the party, art met commerce and I took orders. Miguel and Isaac took a chance by allowing someone else to do their performance for them, but I think I did them proud.

My Tupperware parties at the Vintage Festival will take place across the whole weekend of 29 to 31 July, on the ground floor of the Royal Festival Hall. Festival ticket holders only, I'm afraid, but I will also be taking a turn around the market place now and again.

Tupperware Classics: Space Saver Ovals a.k.a Modular Mates

2011-07-03T20:02:00.004+01:00

This photo is obviously a publicity shot. No-one in the real world would have kitchen storage like that. Would they?

Ladies and gentleman I refer you to Sandie, one of my first ever customers in 2006. When I delivered her order, she sweetly allowed me to take a snap of her larder. I refer you also to Leanne and Paul, who have hosted two fun parties at their lovely home in Woodmansterne, and who again were kind enough to allow me to photograph their kitchen in 2007.

A kitchen cupboard well-stocked with Space Savers is the sign of a hard-core Tupperware connoisseur, like those lovely customers I just mentioned. A snazzy lunchbox, water bottle or sandwich keeper is something you can show off, or showcase in the office fridge, but only you see the inside of your kitchen cupboards. Just imagine opening that door to bliss, not chaos.

The Space Saver range is another product that Tupperware could not stop, even though they tried. They had an ostentatious farewell party a couple of years back, and replaced them with the boxier and frankly superior Space Maker range. But, momentum and demand brought them back, and the Space Savers are still a mainstay of the catalogue. I find they are especially popular with my antipodean customers, who I suppose are used to being particularly scrupulous with the air-tight storage of dry food, protecting it from humidity and bugs.

The Space Saver is as well-designed a piece of Tupperware as any. Maybe more. It comes in four sizes -- five if you include the round spaghetti jar -- which correspond with food packaging sizes. Designed on the skyscraper principle, the Space Saver has a small "footprint" on your shelf or countertop, storing vertically to maximise space in my hostesses' bijou London kitchens.

Interestingly (to me, anyway), the Space Saver name is only used in the UK. In markets where kitchens and living spaces tend to be bigger, like Australia and the US, the name is Modular Mates, emphasising their stacking and tesselating qualities. Because with a selection of the different sizes, you can create stacks all the same height, which is very pleasing. The lip on the seal means they stack securely without toppling. Here's Leanne's stack for a perfect example. Opening your larder to see that, you don't have to be Bree Vanderkamp to feel a frisson of pleasure.

Once you look at it in detail, you realise what a feat of kitchengineering the Space Saver is. The container is lightly frosted to add to the uniform appearance when many are used, but there is a cutaway polished window, so you can see what's inside. The seal has two separate openings, a small one for pouring and a large one for scooping. The seal opens flush against the side of the product, so there is no clogging or backwash when you pour something like flour. The Space Saver is slim, and fits comfortably and ergonomically in the hand. At a party, I sometimes make a saucy remark about that, depending on the mood of the crowd.

You can get a sheet of reusable labels for your Space Savers. No need to arrange them in alphabetical order though.

As a treat, here's my favourite relative Aunt Barbara, the top-selling Tupperware lady in the US, demonstrating them for you:

B01 Oval 1 500ml £8.00
B02 Oval 2 1.1L £8.80
B03 Oval 3 1.7L £9.65
B04 Oval 4 2.3L £11.05
B13 Round 5 1.1L £7.95
B25 Container labels £2.10

Tupperware Classics: Sandwich Keeper

2011-06-27T21:38:00.005+01:00

Tupperware is keen on coining new names for its products. I have a soft spot for the Eleganzia range, which I always say in RuPaul's voice, but the Bake 2 Basics range is one pun too many for me. And there is a lot of 'n': Grab'n'Cut (scissors), Heat'n'Serve (microwave dish), and Sip'n'Care (baby's cup).

I also like the idea of naming the product in a way that suggests it is not just passively storing your food, but actively taking care of it. Doing the job so you don't have to. So your cake is not in a tin, but in the Cake Taker; and your sandwich is not in a box but in the Sandwich Keeper.

The Sandwich Keeper is a very humble product, almost the cheapest thing in the catalogue. It is the product I recommend to party guests who don't really want to buy anything, but who don't want to be impolite to the hostess. It feels like a classic, hence its inclusion here, but that's maybe because there is something a bit old school and retro about a sandwich made with sliced bread. You certainly wouldn't get a baguette, roll, or doorstep butty in there.

Don't underestimate the Sandwich Keeper. It is beautifully designed. There is no seal to store (or lose), because it is attached, which is a blessing. The Sandwich Keeper's compactness, slim with the rounded edges, is very pleasing on the eye and in the hand. It is a minor feat of engineering too, with what Tupperware grandly calls a "living hinge", all moulded from one piece of plastic. There are no separate pieces to fall apart, get lost, or harbour crumbs or germs. The clasp is also integral, and will not pop open when carried.

A nice feature is that it is designed with a proper top and bottom. The bottom has four little feet that keep it slightly raised above the counter top to avoid scratches. According to my product guide from Tupperware HQ, the sandwich icon etched on the top of the Keeper adds "a touch of humour", which even I admit might be pushing it a bit.

The Sandwich Keeper currently comes in the same colours as the Sports Bottle, and customers do indeed tend to buy them together for children's school lunches, no doubt packed in smart West London kitchens. On my consultant order form, intriguingly the colours are marked "Boy" and "Girl". At first glance in the catalogue, you would say "Green" and "Pink" -- but hold your horses, and look closer. In a camp flourish worthy of Eleganzia herself, the choice of colours is actually a manly "Tang" or a womanly "Fuchsia".

K26 Fuchsia Sandwich Keeper: £5.10
K27 Tang Sandwich Keeper: £5.10
Limited edition Hello Kitty Sandwich Keeper: £7.65
Limited edition Spongebob Sandwich Keeper: £7.20

Tupperware Classics: Tiwi Ice Tups

2011-06-26T11:27:00.005+01:00

"Tiwi" is a teddy bear character devised and copyrighted by the Tupperware Brands corporation, but he seems to have never quite caught on with children. There have been a number of Tiwi branded products over the years, and he does still feature in some knick-knacks like colouring books and keyrings that I can use to keep hostesses' children out of my face while I am trying to entertain her guests. But Tiwi is pretty much toast, usurped by Hello Kitty and Spongebob Squarepants, both of whom are licensed for kids' Tupperware products that I can occasionally supply.

Funnily enough, Tiwi's last remaining product is one of Tupperware's most beloved and classic: the Tiwi Ice Tups, a.k.a. the Tupperware ice lolly makers. When I say beloved, I mean of course beloved by parents, not by the children they are aimed at. I am a childless bachelor, but even I know that just as children prefer Spongebob to Tiwi, they would generally choose a Fab or a Funny Foot over a frumpy home-made ice lolly.

Still, the Ice Tups are a fun and iconic product, and they always prompt cries of nostalgia when folks see them, and as such they are definitely worthy of their place in this countdown of classics. The set consists of a stand and 6 moulds, each stick featuring Tiwi himself. You also get a couple of extra seals and sticks for when they get lost (and they will). You fill the moulds with fruit juice. coulis, milk shake, smoothie or yogurt, then give them a few hours in the freezer to make healthy and original bespoke ice lollies.

But face the truth. If you order Tiwi Ice Tups from me, they are for you, not for your children. So why not make some grown-up lollies for yourself. If there was time at a Tupperware party to prepare and freeze lollies, I would be filling the moulds with coffee ice cream laced with a slug of Kahlua, then dipping them in melted chocolate before a quick re-freeze. Or I would make these fantastic and easy Pimms ice-lollies.

I have run Tupperware stalls at many summer fetes and fayres, and even though there are some quite spendy items on my display, it had never occurred to me that they are tempting thieves. Strangely, the only product that has ever been stolen is a set of the Tiwi Ice Tups, at the St Barnabus Community fair in Bow, East London. I blogged the whole sorry saga back in September 2008.

K20 Tiwi Ice Tups £19.45
Kahlua and Pimms from your local suppliers

Tupperware Classics: Shape-O

2011-06-25T11:54:00.008+01:00

This rather arty shot of the Tupperware Shape-O toy comes from the Australian blog Babyology: Modern Finds for Hip Kids and Parents. Modern? Hip? For a toy that hasn't changed in 50 years, that is quite an accolade. As the blog says, the toy has retained its iconic status because "the Shape-O teaches shapes, colours and logic as well as being a super rolling rattle for bubs".

I find that almost everyone knows the Shape-O from childhood, but that many folks are surprised that it is a Tupperware product. In fact, the Tupperware catalogue has always had one or two products unconnected with food, usually toys. Remember the Pop a Lot. Tupperdiva's fantastic website has a gallery featuring Tupperware toys from 1965 to 1989 -- including the Amphibio and Totempails, which were briefly available again last year during Tupperware's UK 50th anniversary. Today's UK catalogue features the Shape-O, and also the pleasingly old-fashioned Stencil Set that Brianna and Chelsea are enjoying in this 90-second YouTube clip. Note Chelsea's product placement of the Shape-O at the end of the clip!

All the classic Tupperware pieces I am blogging about have had some subtle colour changes over the years, usually to reflect changing tastes in kitchen decor. A 1970s solid opaque orange Quick Shake for sure looks a little too old-school for most current tastes, and it now comes in a see-through colour that the catalogue calls Custard. And while it's true that a Google image search will return a very few Shape-O's that have dabbled with a different palette, that was a very brief interlude. I can certainly only supply them in the classic and timeless red and blue, with yellow shapes.

The Shape-O is a fantastic toy, and brilliantly designed to take children through different stages of play and learning. For the very youngest children, 6 months and up, it is a ball that makes a cool noise because of the shapes inside, and that is easy to pick up by the holes. Eventually the child will learn to pull the little handles connected to elastic, which opens the ball to release the yellow shapes. Posting the pieces back inside the ball teaches about shapes and logic. And when that gets old, each shape features an etched number and dots, for number learning.

A Shape-O is built to last, and they are often passed down from parent to child. I know from my customers that it is also a popular nostalgic gift for an adult friend or family member. The mini-version, attached to a keyring, would probably be my best-seller, if I could get hold of them in any quantity.

Naturally, sometimes the shapes themselves get lost. A very determined and strong pair of children who try to stretch the two halves as far apart as possible might eventually snap the elastic. Spares are available from me.

K02 Shape-O toy: £19.35
Spare shapes and elastic: £1 each
Shape-O key ring: Good luck. Try eBay.

Tupperware Classics: Square Rounds

2011-06-23T20:28:00.008+01:00

Of all the Tupperware classics, the Square Rounds are probably the most timeless and iconic. Whether it's the roomy 800ml size shown here, or the lower-slung 400ml version, it is a sorry kitchen that doesn't have some Square Rounds. Air-tight, water-tight, cool-looking -- perfect.

Once they were an all-purpose Tupperware container, but Square Rounds have really come into their own for freezer storage. The high-quality polymer material stays flexible at freezer temperatures, so a quick dip in warm water and a squeeze will loosen the solid contents with no need for a knife or pounding. The stackable design, seal with its raised lip, and slight tapering towards the base allow for maximum air-flow and quick freezing.

Originally both the container and the seal came in a milky white. The colours have chopped and changed over the years, and the font used on the seal has updated every few decades, from 50s diner-menu style through 70s bubble writing to today's Helvetica Bold. They went solid orange in the 70s (what didn't?), but they now have settled into a frosty white, with bold single-coloured seals. The current Freezer Starter Set consists of two each of the 800ml and 400ml sizes, and a longer Double Diner with their seals in orange, dark pink, and red. An audacious use of very similar colours together, but it works. Interestingly, the Double Diner name itself is a throwback to an earlier time, because it originally came with a divider, for use as a lunch box.

People sometimes say, "What is the big deal, Tupperware Man? I use plastic tubs from the Chinese takeaway, or old Flora pots. They are free." I am all for a bargain, but frankly I think Square Rounds are value for money. How many of the kitchens we grew up in still have Tupperware products that are 30, 40 even 50 years old, and still going strong, having paid for themselves hundreds of times over. I have to say I do also have plastic tubs from the Chinese takeaway: they are what I use when I send people home with leftovers. My Tupperware Square Rounds never leave the house.

If you buy Square Rounds now, they have a subtle (and for Tupperware, very rare) surface design: an abstract snowflake pattern etched all around the sides, as you can see in the photo. But otherwise they are identical to their 50s ancestors. I can stack some of my grandma's original milky white ones with mine, seamlessly.

Here's a Tupperware party tip: pour a layer of melted chocolate laced with a few drops of mint essence onto the seal, just enough to just reach the brim of the raised edges. Into the fridge it goes, and you soon have some classy thin mints.

D03 Freezer Square Rounds, 4 x 400ml: £17.65
D05 Freezer Square Rounds, 2 x 800ml: £9.90
D11 Freezer Starter Set (2 x 400ml, 2 x 800ml, 1 Double Diner 1.3L: £29.25

Tupperware classics: Quick Shake

2011-06-23T19:25:00.003+01:00

A couple of years ago, someone at Tupperware decided the Quick Shake needed a bit of a revamp. It was redesigned and repackaged for the naughties as a smoothie maker. Frankly, you mess with perfection at your peril, and like New Coke, the gussied-up Quick Shake was soon airbrushed from history, and the original reinstated.

The Quick Shake's printed scale makes it a handy measuring jug for up to 500ml of liquid, but it is when you add the little blender wheel and seal that it performs the real magic. Pop the wheel in, snap on the seal, and then you can beat eggs in a few shakes, and whip cream in a few more. Many a 1960s housewife Quick Shaked (Shook?) her Yorkshire pudding mix for maximum airy magic, and many still do.

The Quick Shake of the 1970s was probably solid opaque orange. Then it went clear, and for many years had a dark blue seal as seen here -- or a hot pepper red for the occasional limited edition. It now comes in "custard", with just an orange blender wheel as a subtle call-back to its 1970s glory days.

I have shaken Bloody Marys and Martinis, and at one memorable Tupperware spa party in Highbury, I shook olive oil with rock salt and a spring of rosemary from the garden for summer sandal foot lotion. You can also save a fortune on frappucinos by shaking your own. And don't forget the air-tight seal allows you to keep the contents fresh until if you need them: one of my more outdoorsy hostesses cracks half a dozen eggs into the Quick Shake and packs it with the camping gear, dispensing the beaten eggs as she needs them for camp breakfasts.

The Quick Shake is still one of my best selling items, and most fondly remembered by customers. And I don't just supply complete Quick Shakes: every month or so, I get a breathless and panicky voice mail or email, from someone whose Quick Shake blender wheel was lost in a house move, or whose Quick Shake seal has lost the little flip-cap or been melted on the hob. I supply both pieces as spare parts, and you know what, I usually just pop them in an envelope without even asking for any payment. The idea of an incomplete Quick Shake is too tragic, and I am happy to put it right. It's what any Tupperware Man would do.

E86 Quick Shake 500ml in custard and orange: £9.90
Spare blender insert and flip-cap: usually free

Economies rise and fall, but cakes stand tall

2009-05-20T10:37:00.000+01:00

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

2009-04-20T21:10:00.000+01:00

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

2009-04-07T23:57:00.000+01:00

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

2008-10-03T21:06:00.000+01:00

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!"

2008-09-27T19:55:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-27T19:24:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-23T11:12:00.000+01:00

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

2008-06-11T22:56:00.001+01:00

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.

Famous Belgians

2008-06-03T23:31:00.000+01:00

My friend Caspar is just back from visiting his parents in Antwerp, Belgium, where he came across this Tupperware shop and took photos for me (above and below left). I had no idea there was such a thing as a Tupperware shop. According to Caspar, the shopkeeper told him that the products cost slightly more in the shop than you would pay at a party.

I receive an email from Kevin, who is producing a play set in the 1960s. And boy, is he keen to get the details right:

"The play is set in London in 1962, and one of the props is a plastic, see-through biscuit tin. I was wondering if you could offer me any advice on this. I immediately thought of a Tupperware tub for this, but having done more research it seems Tupperware didn't reach this country until 1960, so would this mean in 1962 it would still not have been a common household item? Similarly I am after any information you can give me on what the Tupperware pots would have looked like at this period, and whether you think that one would have been used in this situation."

I explain that the Space Savers (right) look approximately the same as they always have, and would probably fit the bill. I refer the producer to his local consultant in Cardiff, but I do also offer to supply him with some props if the show transfers to the West End.

I take food writer Tom Moggach to task over his article about leftovers for The London Paper. He writes that "Investing in good tupperware also helps. Lock and Lock is easily the best brand, available from John Lewis". Now I don't have anything against Lock and Lock but, as I asked Tom, doesn't the fact that he uses the brand name Tupperware to generically describe storage containers mean that Tupperware must therefore be the best? He emails back with a sweet apology and a request for a catalogue.

My first party for ages is coming up this Saturday for Sylvia and her friends in Highgate. And on Sunday I have a stall at the Open Garden Square weekend event in Trinity Church Square, round the corner from where I live. More grandly, I am hoping to be running a stall at the Garden Fete at Lambeth Palace later this month for the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.

Another corny old advert

2008-03-22T15:38:00.001Z

Another vintage US Tupperware television ad has appeared on YouTube. This one is for the Serving Center:

Targeting the Germans

2008-03-16T17:39:00.000Z

Germany is Tupperware's biggest market in the world. German folk really love their Tupperware. The products seem to combine some typical (and stereotypical) German enthusiasms: modern design, baking, organisation, not wasting resources and money, and fresh foods that need to be stored properly, like cooked meat, cheese, cream cakes and salads.

Now and again, I have made a few attempts to let German Londoners know that they can get their beloved Tupperware from me. I offered a stall or fundraiser to the German church, who memorably emailed me back saying "Hallo Andrew. We are not interested." And I offered a Tupperware party to the German Information Centre, who gave a hollow laugh and offered to display a pile of catalogues.

Meanwhile, I am contacted by a new free newspaper for German-speaking Londoners, The German Link. Do I want to advertise with them, and perhaps reach that precious London German market? I do, I really do, but given my non-existent promotion budget, not to mention the Tupperware company's aversion to advertising in general, I decide it would not be a good idea.

Anyway this weekend I stumble on the first issue of the paper. There is a pile of German Links just inside the window at the new German Deli at Borough Market, home of sensational sausages, German groceries and German-style cheesecakes. I ask the fräulein if I can leave a pile of my postcards by the newspapers, and to my delight she says "Ja, natürlich, mein lieber Herr". If you study the above photo very closely, between the Borough market types going about their business you can see where my friend Young, a marketing professional who was pottering round the market with me, has cheekily stood a card up in the window [right] on our way out.

Alan needs a jelly mould -- now!

2008-03-13T21:19:00.000Z

You may imagine me strolling the aisles of an echoing Tupperware warehouse. In fact, I work from home and I only keep a very small stock of Tupperware products here, generally the most popular items. Most of the time, I will need to order products from my distributor, and it takes around a week or so.

With this in mind, a call comes out of the blue from a researcher on ITV1's Alan, Alan Titchmarsh's afternoon show. Can I supply them with a old-style jelly mould? Apparently, Alan has suddenly decided he needs one for the show. Tupperware has two different fantastic traditional jelly moulds, I explain, and I could have one for you in a week. "Well, we really need it for 2pm" the researcher trills. I glanced at my kitchen clock, and it was 12:30pm. If I had a spare one in stock, I would certainly have taken it over to them, because I don't live far from where the show is recorded. And it would have been a good story for the blog. But I don't.

I don't drive, so I don't know what possessed me to order this huge Tupperware car-magnet from America via Ebay [above]. Blame the cheap dollar. It is two feet by one foot, and the only large surface it fits is the door of my freezer. If anyone fancies slapping it onto their car door and doing some advertising for me, let me know. I can pay you in Tupperware.

Orders are trickling in, but nothing special. It's almost time for the catalogue to change over to Spring/Summer, and I have plenty of the Autumn/Winter edition left over. So I heave them into an Aldi bag, and take the bus over to Wimbledon, London's South African enclave, where I have a small order to deliver to Fiona. Around Wimbledon and Raynes Park train stations there are branches of The Savanna, a South African grocery chain, where staff are always happy to display catalogues. At the Raynes Park shop, my catalogues form a sensational South African installation [right] with the ostrich biltong.

I understand that there is another male Tupperware consultant in the UK now, name of Daniel. Looking forward to meeting him.

Tup-loading

2008-02-16T21:40:00.000Z

If you search for "Tupperware" on YouTube, you get dozens of deeply tedious videos uploaded by doting parents showing American toddlers on the kitchen floor playing with Tupperware products. Please no more. Meanwhile there are some gems too, some of them uploaded by the Tupperware company itself.

This is a fantastic 1970s US ad for Tupperware's Ultra 21, now supercede by UltraPlus:

Some Mexican guests getting excited by Mini-Maxes:

And a Mini-Max commercial:

What really happens at a Tupperware party:

Consultant to the stars

2008-01-12T12:49:00.000Z

It occurs to me that I am the Tupperware Man for anyone who lives in Central London, so sometimes when I hear or read that a well-known Londoner has praised Tupperware, directly or indirectly, I send them a catalogue and introduce myself.

They usually don't reply, but recently an embossed heavy cream correspondence card from Mayfair resident Nigella Lawson drops into my post box. Her assistant Zoe thanks me for the catalogue and says they will let me know if Nigella needs anything.

She is classy.

The Comeback Kid

2008-01-07T21:49:00.000Z

Hello and Happy New Year. I have been lying low for a couple of months. Rumours of my Tupper-demise are unfounded. And despite threatening here a few times to kick over the tower of Mini-Maxes and sweep off, apron a-swish behind me, I am still pushing the plastic. I have often been frustrated because I can only sell Tupperware through parties, and can only date parties through word of mouth. This just wasn't working in the context of my home city of London. People do want Tupperware, but sadly they don't really want to host a party for it. I have had some free and frank exchanges of views with the Tupperware top brass about this and some other matters which I won't trouble you with, gentle reader.

But two strange thingss have happened since last we spoke. Firstly, and despite my sluggish autumn, I have just heard today from the UK distributor some interesting news.

I was the top-selling consultant in the whole country for 2007!

What's more, say it loud, say it proud:

You can now buy Tupperware without going to a Tupperware party!

Yes, Tupperware UK now allows sales through "virtual parties". These are not the online parties that consultants run in the US, sadly. It simply means that you can order direct from a consultant, from the catalogue. You don't need to hoover, clean, cater, invite your friends over, or indeed have any friends to invite over. And of course, this new development also means you can now become a Tupperware consultant without having to shlep a kit-bag across your city. You can just distribute catalogues around your friends and neighbours and wait for the orders to flood in. OK, maybe "flood" is pushing it a bit, but if you want to know about being a Virtual Consultant, do let me know.

Oh, and to update my last post, I have now lost a stone through Slimming World.

Having said that I have virtually retreated, I do still run parties and other in-person events and fundraisers when I am asked. I am just not often asked. But I never say never, and when Maria, a friend of my friend Laura who was my first ever hostess way way back in May 2006, asks me to run her baby shower back in October, I am delighted to oblige.

Here's a round-up of my other Tupper news from the last couple of months:

There was another Church Fayre organised by the House of Homosexual Culture at St John's Waterloo. Last year's event was an Autumn Fayre, this time it is a Christmas Fayre. I am given the spot right next to the pulpit. There are hundreds of visitors, and I sell plenty. I also manage to press catalogues on author Sarah Waters and lead singer of the Feeling slash M&S model Dan Gillespie-Sells, but no parties have come out of it yet. We'll see.

A second Christmas Fayre, this one a weekday evening event organised by the KPMG company as a Christmas shopping evening for their staff. It's a bit of a disaster. I am experiencing terrible (although expected and normal) flu-like symptoms from recent diptheria and yellow-fever vaccinations (I am going to Uganda over Christmas). I can barely stand up, let alone smile and sell Tupperware. I don't sell so much as a Universal Peeler or Silicone Spatula. My neighbouring stall Kazu the Japanese Florist also sells nothing, and we both rather feel we have been sold a pup. Far from racking up sales to the cash-rich, time-poor city types we had been expecting, all the customers are PAs and secretaries looking for token secret Santa gifts. My state-of-the-art kitchenware and Kazu's exquisite wreaths are ignored in favour of pound-shop pashminas. The champagne is nice, but the event is a right dud for me.

My most intriguing delivery is to an actress currently appearing in the West End show Avenue Q. I drop off her order at the Stage Door between rehearsal and the evening performance.

I troop over to London's Science Museum to see their Plasticity exhibition. I faux-casually insert some catalogues into their leaflet rack. They have on display one of the original Tupperware injection moulding machines for making a Mix-N-Stor (right).

I bid on and win a very cool snow globe on Ebay (see main photo) which appears to be a consultant reward or gift from Tupperware in the US. It features some key Tupperware pieces caught in a snow storm.

Margaret "Benny" Hone, my grandmother, customer, and source of all gossip and mischief, dies peacefully at home, aged 92, in the early hours of 3rd January. She fell ill just a few days before, fairly sound of body and very sound of mind until the last. Here she is talking Tupperware with my cousin Emma at my sister Lois's Tupperware party in August 2006.

The Man with Two Lunches

2007-10-09T20:51:00.000+01:00

I wouldn't bother selling Tupperware if I didn't like it and use it myself. And my own Tupperware is getting a particularly good work-out right now because I have decided I need to lose some weight. I have joined my local Slimming World class, and I want to lose about 20 pounds. I know from previous experience that the weekly weigh-in, the food diary, and not least the money I have to pay, are good for concentrating my mind on shedding a stone and a half.

So my fridge is rammed with vegetables in FridgeSmarts, and healthy leftovers in Stuffables. And I haul my healthy lunch to work in Mini-Maxes most days. Today I have an especially impressive stack (see photo) of five separate containers. I am not Mr Two Lunches though -- half of it is my dinner for later: I am going straight from work to see When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's 4-hour documentary about Hurricane Katrina, and I will definitely need a good feed during the interval.

Those titchy little containers on top of the pile are fantastic. "Midgets" they are called. Not very politically correct, and unfortunately they are not in the current UK catalogue either. I snap them up on eBay whenever I see them. They are great for little gifts and prizes at parties, but right now I am using them myself to take salad dressing for my lunches, and my 28g grated cheese allowance. They are also perfect for measuring out 28g of porridge oats for my breakfast. A customer last Spring wanted some to store the reeds for her bassoon.

I run a party at the weekend for a sweet ex-pat Kiwi family. If I relied on UK customers, I would sell nothing. Daughter Jessica (right), 8, steals the show, and she is a girl not afraid to mix her looks. Today she is working a flamenco dress, jewelled tiara and sparkly Princess heels.

US Tupperware has just launched Tupper Tube, where consultants can upload videos of themselves demonstrating Tupperware products, with the best one every week winning $1000. This week it is Modular Mates, or what we call Space Savers in the UK, and next week's the food preperation range. Aunt Barbara (see last post) has duly uploaded her videos. I will probably borrow her observation that the no-slip rubber base of the Mix N Stor is great for stopping it from sliding around on her hostesses' faux-granite kitchen counters.

Don't mess with my Tupperware

2007-10-02T23:08:00.000+01:00

Here's a couple of funny videos that have appeared on YouTube recently. First of all, Aunt Barbara, who is a real Tupperware consultant in Long Island, New York, demonstrates Modular Mates, which are what they call Space Savers in the US:

And don't go messing with someone's Tupperware -- you might end up on Judge Judy:

All the world under one Tupperware

2007-08-26T20:43:00.000+01:00

I am just back from lunch with my friend Peter at the Oriental City in North West London. "All Asia under one roof", they say, and the whole place is in the style of shopping malls you see in the Far East. The Food Court has food stalls selling Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian and Indian food. Most of the customers are London-based folk from these countries.

There is a Japanese pound-shop type place with a whole wall of food storage containers, which Peter points out to me with an eyebrow raised, saying "The competition!". I ignore him and add a stack of Tupperware catalogues to the mall's free newspaper area, but I don't leave one in the pound shop, that would be cheeky. I think the catalogues were the only thing in English. You never know, I may have to recruit some people to run bilingual Tupperware parties for me.

Next month New Piccadilly cafe in the West End of London closes its doors for the last time. This place is a museum of 1950s cafe style, with a menu to match ("tunny fish"), and it has been threatened with closure for as long as I have lived in London, which is nearly 20 years. I go to the New Piccadilly this week for one last time with my friend Paul, and leave a few catalogues by a pot plant, under a Sound of Music poster.

The British do seem curiously resistant to taking Tupperware back into their hearts, and it's orders from ex-pats that are keeping me in business at the moment, especially Antipodeans. Steph's Mum is visiting from Australia and orders her some key Tupperware pieces for her London flat. I deliver them to an intriguing Mayfair mansion block round the back of Park Lane. I am dying to see what it's like inside, but sadly I don't get past the doorman because Steph has taken the baby for a walk, and is not home to take delivery.

Another hostess, Michelle, is a Kiwi who works right next to St Paul's Cathedral, and since all her guests were colleagues, I can deliver all the orders straight to the office. It's a lovely London day, and now St Paul's has had a facelift, it's a magnificent setting for a delivery. Another regular customer, Ivana, who is originally from the Czech Republic, has ordered a couple of items that I hand-deliver to her new office in Holborn rather that post to her as usual, so I get to meet her in person for the first time. Finally, this weekend I will also need to drop off a few items to the Shell Centre on London's South Bank, where Collette works. She misses her Quick Shakes from back home in South Africa.

I offer the organiser of the 2007 British Cheese Awards a CheeseSmart so she can see how good they are. She says yes she would love one. A few days later I pack it in a box with the contents of my shredder to protect it, and give her a quick call to confirm its on its way. The person I speak with puts me straight through, but the organiser herself then tells me off for bothering her when I could have spoken to her PA. She is so shirty with me that I unpack the CheeseSmart and decide she can whistle for it. Politeness costs nothing, but rudeness has cost her a CheeseSmart.

Still no parties in the diary, but at least I am not the only one having a lean time. White trash diva Dixie Longate (say it out loud) posted this message on her MySpace page:

"Hey Hookers, it’s Me, Dixie Longate. I’m in a mess of a pickle. As many of you know, I have been doing my show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” off-Broadway. It has been great, but the New Yorkers don’t seem to be buying the Tupperware like they should, so I have fallen from my position as #1 Personal Seller of Tupperware in the U.S.A. With the end of the fiscal year for Tupperware being this Friday, July 29th, I need your help desperately. If everyone I know just buys one piece of Tupperware, then I may be able to wrap this thing up. I am currently $17,288 behind the #1 Seller. Well, that is only 910 BBQ Specials or 494 FridgeSmart Specials! So, go to my site and place your orders now. Tell your friends; and make sure they tell their friends! Please help a sister out. You know I would do it for you. And I probably have! XOXO Dixie."

And what is it with drag queen Tupperware ladies? Pam Teflon is now snapping at Dixie's (high) heels:

Dutch courage

2007-08-07T16:39:00.000+01:00

A party this week for the staff at the Royal Netherlands Embassy near Hyde Park, and I am thinking of it as my last party for a while. On the outside, 38 Hyde Park Gate is your standard posh Kensington building, but on the inside it is a little piece of Holland: relaxed, airy and full of signs in Dutch, all lower case and Helvetica font. The hostesses are Daphne (the Cultural Attache) and Diana, both with impeccable English, wry humour and a tall blonde understated European glamour. There are Warhol-ish prints of the King and Queen on the walls, which perfectly capture the mix of laid-back and formal that you would expect from a Dutch Embassy.

The party takes place in the staff kitchen and is great fun, although I am hoarse by the end from talking over the chatting guests. The end of the working day is more of a chance for Embassy staff to chat over wine and nibbles than to listen to some bloke babbling on about Tupperware. But the orders come flying in. One lady confides hilariously that her ex-husband nabbed all the Tupperware during their recent divorce, and she has come along to restock. She gets the full range of Space Savers for cupboard storage. The FridgeSmarts (for salads) and CheeseSmarts (for cheese) are very popular, as my friend Caspar had predicted of his countrywomen when I rang him last week and asked for tips on which products to showcase at a Dutch party.

You never know who will be a fan of Tupperware. This week I had a message via my MySpace page from singer Elkie Brooks.

My friends Laura and Claire set off for their 6-month world trip this week. I took a similar trip 5 years ago, and wrote about it for The Guardian, so I gave them some things I wish I had taken with me: clothes pegs, soup cubes, business cards and a few chocolates to hide in your backpack then suddenly remember and enjoy when times are hard. I packed it all into handy Tupperware oysters, and I am hoping they might send me a few photos of the oysters in action, for me to include here on my blog.

I was in hospital last week for an arthroscopy on my left knee. I am all strapped up, and stuck at home for a little while. I can sort of get around, but slowly and awkwardly. Even so, because the Dutch Embassy is pretty much door-to-door on the 360 bus, I decide to do the delivery myself, knee permitting, rather than asking my nice neighbour Math to do it for me. I am glad I went back myself, because the security guard has been waiting to talk to me ever since he heard there was a Tupperware party, and he asks for six catalogues for his wife and her friends. As I wait for the bus back to Elephant and Castle from Hyde Park, I notice that the house opposite has a blue plaque saying Benny Hill lived there from 1960 to 1986. I shove a few catalogues through the door.

Not sure what the future holds for me Tupper-wise. Without my website I get very few enquiries now, and those referrals I do get via Head Office tend to be people who just want a catalogue or a couple of specific items. As I said in an email to previous customers this week, I am happy to take orders and run parties for them, but given that my main source of new leads has been shut down, and since I have decided to work full-time for the next months, I think that will be the extent of my business for the time being.

But who knows. I will keep my options open.

It's raining, it's pouring

2007-07-19T21:57:00.001+01:00

I am always interested to see Tupperware's regional variations. When I deliver Lena's order this week, she shows me her Lebanese Tupperware olive keeper. It is a sort of reverse-cafetiere, with a plunger that lifts the olives out of the brine that they are stored in. There is also a little pair of tongs built in, with which to select your olive once you have raised the plunger. I know there is a similar product in New Zealand for storing the pickled beetroot so beloved in that country, because Kiwi Londoners have asked me if I can get one for them (I can't). Anyway, Lena says she is moving this summer and wants to convene some of her expat Lebanese friends for a Tupperware party when she does. Meanwhile she is feeding her habit with occasional one-off orders.

The Heavens open moments after I step off the bus on my way to Glenn's Tupperware BBQ in North London. I have to shelter under a tree round the corner from his house, a river of rainwater coursing down the road towards Chalk Farm station. The rain became torrential and I practically climb inside someone's privet in my effort to keep myself and the kitbag dry.

The Cool Cubes is the big hit of the party. Glenn and his friends buy six of Tupperware's design-award winning ice tray, which you can read about here. What's more, when I get home there is a plaintive email from Paul, a design-conscious New Yorker, who asks if I can send him some Cool Cubes by Air Mail, since it is "only available is Europe. This is just not right." The Tupperware Politburo forbids me from selling outside the UK and from fielding enquiries by email -- yawn -- but the deal-breaker is really the exchange rate: the weak dollar and strong pound will make the Cool Cubes a deeply unCool $20 apiece.

Last summer I left my kitbag behind on a bus luggage rack in my post-party exhaustion. I do still sometimes put it in the rack, as you can see, but I now keep a beady eye on it at all times. I can just imagine my whole demonstration kit being detonated as a suspicious package.

A nice email arrives this week from Jonathan Guthrie at the Financial Times, who has that noticed my "entertaining website" has gone offline. He says he is sorry to see it go. Not as sorry as I am. I have not been able to generate any new customers without my website, and only have one more party scheduled -- at the Royal Netherlands Embassy if you please. Then that's it. Tupperware and I will be on a break.

Travels and troubles

2007-07-05T23:34:00.000+01:00

My customer and neighbour Richard Reynolds has his fingers in many pies, and such green fingers: his Guerilla Gardening project is wonderful enterprise that brings plants and flowers in the dead of night to bleak spots in London.

Richard took a trip around Europe this summer, and took this lovely photo of his picnic on a French train, showcasing his collapsible Mini-Max bowls. His Flickr photo essay of the whole trip called Travels with My Tupperware really made me smile.

It's a few weeks now since Tupperware UK made me close my website, stop all
advertising and promotion of my business on other websites and in all media, and stop taking enquiries from new customers by email.

As explained to me by the Managing Director, I have been breaking three major rules of Tupperware:

* I infringed the company's trademark copyright by using the word Tupperware in my domain name, misleading customers by suggesting I am the Tupperware company itself, rather than an independent consultant.
* I used my own website to advertise my parties. With or without "Tupperware" in the domain name, this is not allowed.
* I promoted my business in other media and on community websites without permission from the Tupperware company to use their name.

Three strikes and I am out? Maybe... I accept that these are the rules (although I think thy are daft), but I really wish they had been clarified and enforced from the beginning, rather than a year into my enterprise when I have invested time, money and energy into bringing new-style Tupperware parties to London. I am the only consultant working in Central London, a huge potential market, and I have been consistently in the national Top 10 sellers since I started this enterprise last summer. Although interestingly, I have never been able to recruit a single new consultant to work with me, and have always had a lot of enquries from people who want to order from me direct, not by hosting a party, and these are also Tupper-no-no's. But mostly I think this says something about London, that it is a slightly different market to the rest of the country, for lots of reasons.

There did seem to me to be so many missed opportunities and so much unfulfilled potential for selling Tupperware to Londoners, and I felt I knew how to reach a London audience, particularly by promoting my parties and events through my own website and by marketing myself as the London Tupperware Man. I know now that was a big gaffe and has caused me trouble -- and apparently some bad feeling and bitching among other consultants. Though no-one has said anything to me directly, of course.

Anyway since my website and email were closed down, no surprise that I have booked no parties and have had no new customers. Thankfully, some people who contacted me before the website closed have been putting in direct orders, which I will be delivering this weekend. In future I can only stick strictly to the Tupperware party plan, and organise parties for people I have met at previous parties, or who approach Tupperware UK directly. In fact, this is how I should have been doing things all along. I don't think this will work for me, or for London, and this feels like a good time to start winding down.

I do have one long-booked party coming up in a few weeks at quite a posh London venue, which I am excited about, and will report back to you here about that soon.

Clearance sale to follow!

Hot and wet

2007-06-24T00:17:00.000+01:00

My website wings may have been clipped, but business carries on. Well, I say business. There are very few parties at the moment, and business mainly involves me swanning through various London parks in a long apron.

I have taken part in the annual Walk for Life for many years now, raising funds for HIV and Aids charities, and in recent years I have always walked with the team from The Food Chain. This year I decide to do it in Tupperware mode, and a few kind customers have sponsored me to do it. I raised just over £400 and our team altogether raised over £4000, which is quite an achievement. I didn't book any parties or sell any Tupperware, but it was fun and a fantastic cause. And my fellow walkers humoured me through an impromptu Tupperware demo during a rest stop (see main photo).

Global warming has a lot to answer for. Twice this summer I have slept out on my terrace, only to find the next night that not only did I need to sleep inside, but I needed an extra blanket. And at the Myatts Fields Park Fair in Camberwell this weekend I manage to get badly sunburned and soaked over the course of a few hours. The forecast was for heavy rain, and I equip myself for this, but I did not apply any sunscreen. Big mistake. Three times over four hours the heavens opened and drenched my display table, only for the blazing sun to come out and dry it off each time. Next morning my neck is as red as a Microplus pitcher. Here you can see the sun glinting prettily on my damp salad spinner.

Thunder and lightning did kick in later in the day, but I was back home by then. And at least it is better than being shit on by birds, like in Manchester last month.

The event had a French theme, partly because the park was laid out by Huegenots, and also because there is a large Francophone African community in this part of South East London. I am kept amused with Toulouse sausages, Ardennes pate, Senegalese singing and non-alcoholic coktails provided by the drugs awareness group at the stall next to me. I even sell some Tupperware and get a few definite Yesses for parties later in the summer.

Apparently WeightWatchers magazine features four key pieces of Tupperware in its July/August issue, in an article about packed lunches. I have not yet tried to work the weight-loss crowd, and I understand from other consultants that WeightWatchers are a bit funny about allowing third parties into their meetings. I will see if I can get away with leaving a few catalogues at my local group, which is literally across the road in the church attached to the Heygate Estate. Mind you, I have now gained back one-and-a-half of the two stones I shed at Slimming World five years ago, so maybe I will not be a third party after all.

Bad news Friday

2007-06-15T18:26:00.000+01:00

Two phone calls this morning, both with disappointing news.

First, and irrelevant to Tupperware, my dear friend Bo (right) has not achieved the grade he needs in the Economics degree he finished this summer in London. He has a conditional job offer with Ernst and Young, which includes a Work Permit, but he has just missed fulfilling the conditional grade. What's worse, Bo is currently incommunicado in Korea doing his military training, and is oblivious to the bad news that he will not be returning to the UK as planned.

I have only just put down the phone to this disappointing news, when the phone rings again. It's the Managing Director of Tupperware UK. She instructs me that I have to close down my Tupperware Man website, which has been live since May 2006, or face legal action! I am told I may not use the "Tupperware" brand in my domain name, but that even with a change of name I still may not maintain a website with the purpose of promoting my Tupperware business. I cannot field customer enquiries by email, nor can I even publish on any website my phone number or address contact details for potential customers to contact me that way. Websites are the devil, it seems.

I personally think this is a short-sighted and draconian policy worthy of King Canute. But for the moment I have no choice in the matter. I have asked for full details of the policy that I am contravening, and proof that I am bound by it. Assuming I receive these details shortly, my website then will stay offline and I will point the TupperwareMan.co.uk domain name to this blog. For now, I have replaced my site with a rather bitter message (a copy of this blog entry, pretty much).

My website has been central to attracting customers and visitors from across the London area, and I have used London's community websites to put the word out that Tuppereware is back in London. But I must now rely purely on contacts made through my parties and events, and on referrals from Tupperware Head Office. I get a referral perhaps once every three months from Head Office, compared to around 10 a week from my own website, so the number of parties and events is likely to drop off dramatically. Neither does Tupperware UK undertake any advertising or formal PR, that is up to we independent consultants to date parties and promote our businesses in our local area. But like I say, it seems that doing so with a website, or via any established online community, is forbidden.

I am annoyed and discouraged. I have not yet decided whether it is feasible for me to continue as an independent Tupperware consultant without my website. But meanwhile I will honour all parties, events and orders booked to date.

More photos from the Manchester Village Fete

2007-06-05T21:05:00.000+01:00

RealManchester.com has published a set of photos that Rachel Coulson took at the Village Fete in Manchester last month, including some of me and my stall. At one point I asked Miss Whiplash to watch my stall (very EastEnders) while I was taking a toilet break, and you can see her below demonstrating the Salad Spinner in my absence.

Miss Whiplash and Mr Tupperware

2007-05-30T19:26:00.000+01:00

Queer Up North is an annual 3-week festival of films, theatre, comedy, visual arts and more, which takes place in Manchester's Gay Village. This year's festival ends today with a traditional Village Fete, complete with teas and cakes, bouncy castle, Test Your Strength, a coconut shy, a bake-off and, for one day only in the North West, yours truly running a Tupperware party.

I wouldn't normally go so far to run a party, or I would refer it on to my colleague Helen who is manager for the North West, but given the similarity to the Homo Homemakers event last autumn in London, and the fact that I haven't visited Manchester for years, I decide to go. The Festival has zero hospitality budget, and I am skint, so I travel up on the National Express coach (at £22 return, it's a quarter of the train fare) and stay in a backpackers' hostel (£18 a night). How the mighty have fallen.

It is raining and cold as mid-morning I haul the ailing trolley bag across the Canal Street cobbles into Sackville Gardens. The festival team are optimistically hanging bunting. They are also freaking out because the generator for the bouncy castle hasn't shown up -- it never does. With 2 full hours before the public can come in, I leave my bag with the team and slope off to Costa Coffee with my copy of The Observer. I am thrilled to see from the Observer Food Monthly that Hakkasan, the Chinese restaurant where I took my dear friend Bo for lunch yesterday before he went home to Korea for two years, has been named best one in the country.

The rain does ease off, and eventually stops, but there is still a fair wind, and back at Sackville Gardens I lash my tablecloth and banner to the trestle with strong tape and string before arranging my display. I snag a spot under biggest tree, in case the rain starts again, but I come to regret this choice of location when my display is regualrly augmented by bird droppings throughout the afternoon. One gets me square in the face, and another splatters on the poor Cheese Smart. We will both need a good soak when I get home.

Earlier in the Festival, a representative of Culture for Tolerance, the gay festival in Krakow, spoke about the awful hard time the gay community has been having in that city. As hosts of my Tupperware party, the Queer Up North organisers are donating their rewards to Culture for Tolerance. Sales are slow though, and sadly I can only make a £10 donation.

For the bake-off, two of Manchester's premier drag queens Bobbie Dazzler and Miss Whiplash dress down in twinset and pearls to judge the cakes (see main photo). My Tupperchef chef's knife is called on to slice the cakes, although I had earlier been told to keep it hidden in my bag, since it would be considered a weapon, and could get the event closed down. Bobbie Dazzler has her eye on my Salad Spinner too, which she says would be perfect for rinsing out her tights. Later in the evening, I run into the ladies again, now in post outside one of the Canal Street bars, and looking a lot saucier than earlier. "Ooh, it's the Tupperware Man!", Miss Whiplash coos after me.

Back home in London, my trolley bag has really had it. One wheel is twisted round completely, so I am practically pulling the bag along the ground like a dead weight. I toss it into the big bin and order another.

Clapped out

2007-05-23T18:00:00.000+01:00

This week I turn 43. But it's not me that's clapped out -- how very dare you? -- it's my poor Tupperware standard issue trolleybag. I think it's designed to be wheeled from the car to the front door, but mine takes a pounding as I haul it onto buses, off trains, across cobbles and kerbs and through potholes. My first one lasted six months, and my second one, as you can see above, is not in great shape and will need to be retired before long. I, on the other hand, am still boyish.

Because Tupperware is only a couple of years into re-building its sales force in the UK, there are still parts of the country without a local consultant. While this is the case, I am happy to take occasional orders by post, email or phone from far-flung customers who need their Tupperware, but who don't have anyone local to buy it from. Normally, this involves parcelling it up and sending it by post. But this week I get to deliver in person. The order came from Alison, who lives in the far north of Scotland, but is to be delivered to her son Tony, who is in London. She has been visiting Tony recently, and has decided that he needs Tupperware in his life, namely a CheeseSmart and Cheese Knife.

So I call in to son Tony's Soho Square office one morning this week to deliver. The receptionist calls him to the front desk, pronouncing "Tupperware" in a very odd way, like a female Russian spy in a film. Tony appears and I explain who I am, and to his bemusement I demonstrate his Cheese Smart right there in reception. Tony explains that his mum had been a bit horrified by his slovenly cheese storage, hence the gifts. The receptionist smirks throughout, and as lift doors close on me I hear Tony say "Don't tell anyone about this, OK?"

It's the season of summer fetes and fairs. Sadly I can't make it to my local one this year, the Merrick Square Summer Fete, because it is on the same day as the Walk for Life (please sponsor me). But the lovely Rachel, who I worked with on the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, has invited me to run a stall at the fair she is co-organising in Butterfield Green, Stoke Newington, a trendy middle-class part of North London.

It's a really lovely day, perfect weather to be outside all afternoon. I am a bit of a Nicole Kidman when it comes to exposing myself to direct sunlight, so I am pleased to snag a trestle table under the trees, with a panoramic view of the event. It's a very North London take on a summer fete: there are organic freebies, a stall with delicious Thai food, and a tug of war between the police, fire service and estate agents (with London house prices, they are practically an emergency service). I love the dog fashion show -- and only in Stoke Newington would the winning dog be dressed as Jean-Paul Gaultier. I could kick myself for not getting a photo taken with the Japanese swordsmen -- with their long ninja-style aprons, they were dressed exactly like me. But while they are wielding yard-long ceremonial swords, I have a Happy Chopper.

Happy birthday, unhappy German

2007-05-14T19:52:00.000+01:00

This week Pauline invites me to run a lunchtime Tupperware stall at the Orpington offices of Southern Gas Networks. It's a bit of a shlep, but direct on the train from London Victoria, and I set up shop in their conference room. I commandeer a handy flip-chart to create this rather rinky-dink sign to bring the punters in. People drift in during their lunch hour, and I take enough orders to generate some decent rewards for Pauline.

I am always interested in what people use Tupperware products for, so I am intrigued when an email arrives this week from Sandra, a professional musician. She is trying to track down some small Tupperware containers. "They are absolutely perfect for soaking oboe or bassoon reeds. My mother bought me 2 dozen about 20 years ago, but over the years i've managed to leave them in nearly every concert hall in the North West and I am down to my last 2!" Tupperware Man has come to the rescue, and although the pots Sandra needs are not in the current catalogue, I have managed to source some for her.

On Sunday, there is a rare home party that I can walk to. Unfortunately it is pouring with rain, and my trolley bag has developed a dodgy wheel, so I have to get the bus anyway. Down the road in Bermondsey, Adam has invited me to run a party as a surprise birthday treat for his partner Chris, who is an avid baker and was thrilled to discover there is a Tupperware consultant in the heighbourhood. Chris is a serious baker. On the table there were home-made Oreo cookies. And he is a great sport when I make him act as my assistant, complete with garish pink patterned apron.

Adam and Chris's airy and immaculate flat is a great setting for a party, and their guests a charming bunch, who buy plenty of Tupperware. I agree to hold the party order open for a week, as they have a few friends who can't attend today, but who would like to order. The boys will end up with a nice set of rewards I think.

I am still doing my best to infiltrate ex-pat communities in London, and have been working on the Germans who are huge fans of Tupperware. I sent emails over the Bank Holiday weekend to several German churches in the region, offering to run a Tupperware party for them, or to hire a stall at any events they are running this summer. One reply arrives this week. It reads in full: "Hallo Andrew! We are not interested."

Do I crow camply?

2007-04-29T21:41:00.000+01:00

I only just found out that two weeks ago, Financial Times columnist Jonathan Guthrie quoted from my blog in an amusing piece about people who blog about their work. You can only read the whole article if you are a FT.com subscriber. He opines that "professional arcana can be oddly compelling", then goes on to summarise my blog:

"Tupperware Man, a 40-something plastic container salesman, communicates equal enthusiasm for the “tower of Space Savers” accumulated by customers Leanne and Paul of Purley. There is even a photo. Another shows the blogger’s “shrine” to the culinary icon Fanny Cradock. “I am back up there with the big girls,” he crows camply. “In November I was Number Four Tupperware seller in the UK.”

Do really crow camply? Perhaps I do.

I take a little time this week to attach to my apron all the Tupperware keychains I have accumulated, and I have to say they look and sound fantastic (see main photo). At the end of the week I rattle in to the offices of Ascent Insurance Brokers in the City, to run a fundraising Tupperware party for them. It's a women's event for dress-down Friday, a fundraiser for the charity that support families of children with Fragile X syndrome. When I pop in earlier in the week to see the space I have been assigned, I find a huge boardroom table which is crying out to be covered in Tupperware.

My journey from home to the Ascent office in Fenchurch Street is a door to door 15-minute bus ride for me, so I take a lot products more than usual. Here you see them all respledent on the board room table. I set up shop for a three-hour chunk of the day, with people drifting in and out for cakes and coffee, and I add to the array with a microwave Chocolate and Almond Cake. Most people buy something, but I mean literally one thing, so although I take 15 orders, the sales are not that impressive. I can donate £38 as 15% of sales, and another £27 from the raffle, so £65 is an OK donation. But I think the organiser is a bit disappointed with peoples' spending. I work my apron off, but the customers are just not that thrilled with Tupperware as she had hoped. Although I have to say, the refrain I keep hearing, almost announced as a badge of pride, was that "I don't cook".

On Thursday I call in to the Vauxhall Tavern, scene of my bingo debut last week. My Tupperware cards are in the rack between the condom machine and the cards advertising the local police's hotline for hate crimes against gay folk.

A lady in Reading encloses a note with an order for a replacement Quick Shake: "The original was chewed up by a naughty dog in faraway Johannesburg and I have missed it ever since."

"Sift-n-Stor, 54"

2007-04-24T21:18:00.000+01:00

Tim was a guest at one of my parties last summer, hosted by BBC London presenter Baylen Leonard. A quiet and studious-looking young man, he is one of the team behind the House of Homosexual Culture and he recruited me to take part in their Homo Homemakers church fair in October. It was at the fair that I discovered that Tim is also Timberlina: singer, bearded lady, and hostess of the popular and innovative Vauxhallville, a cabaret night at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which is one of London's most famous old-style gay pubs.

On Mondays, Timberlina runs Bingo Pub Night at the same venue, and this week she invites me to help out. The stage is dressed as Timberlina's kitchen, with Tupperware everywhere. I am on hand in my floor-length apron to demonstrate and talk Tupperware in an onstage interview, and to hand out prizes to the winners. Everyone gets a gift bag with a catalogue, a 10% off voucher, a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer and a Chocolate Teacake. The Full House winners take home a Universal Peeler (which I demonstrate onstage with a kiwi fruit) and the Jackpot winner gets a blue Mini-Max.

It always strikes me how much good will there is towards Tupperware. Everyone is in a good mood tonight and between the games, I work the tables like Fay Presto, doing close-up demonstrations of the Mini-Max, the Happy Chopper and the Cool Cubes. In another context, people may have been a bit bemused to be approached in their local pub by a man in a black pinny demonstrating kitchenware, but Timberlina creates an atmosphere of aderanged domesticity where it seems quite normal.

Two young women tell me they have come along tonight after seeing the listing in Time Out (above), and they confess that they are here for the Tupperware not the bingo. Isabelle, one of a group of French Londoners playing bingo pour le premier fois, wins three times and says she will definitely schedule a French Tupperware party some time soon.

Timberlina says it's shame we didn't get a (literally) full house, but I don't mind the small crowd. In fact I was glad it was small-scale for my first taste of performance. Not for me Dixie Longate's Tupperware Party, which opened off-Broadway this week.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of my live demonstration with Timberlina. So here instead is my fellow consultant Miss Hot Stuff demonstrating her rather splendid cleavage as she makes ranch dressing in the Quick Shake.

Sell That Funky Tupperware, White Boy

2007-04-15T12:21:00.000+01:00

This weekend I am invited to run a Tupperware stall at the Heritage Inn in Cricklewood. In fact, I am an official sponsor, since I am donating about £25-worth of Tupperware for the raffle table. The Heritage Inn is a Caribbean bar and restaurant, and today they are hosting a special family day with salsa dancing, cocktails, a raffle and a talent showcase. There is also a small market place with hair braiding, African jewellery, and a beautifully turned out woman from Mary Kay, a party-plan cosmetic company. Two enterprising young guys sell t-shirts bearing black cultural heroes like Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King (and Bruce Lee, curiously), and up on the balcony there is me in a pinny selling plastic kitchenware and making salsa. I am far too white and inhibited to dance the salsa, so I stick to making the salsa in my Quick Chef.

Knowing almost everyone else will be Afro-Caribbean, I wear my English Muffin t-shirt for a laugh, and it raises some smiles and some good natured mickey-taking by the compere at the end of the night when I win a CD of vintage Jamaican music in the raffle, which I am listening to as I write this blog.

The event starts in theory at 3pm but it is very quiet until the entertainment starts at 6pm. Me and the woman from Mary Kay keep primping our stalls and shooting weary glances at each other as the long hours go by with no customers. The lack of punters is partly due to the sudden glorious weather today which is keeping people outside, and everyone who is inside is watching the Grand National. What's more, the fine tradition of keeping "Caribbean time" means no-one is in a hurry. When the show does start at 6pm, Courtney the compere, a lanky Jamaican charmer, gets us all enthused for "this beautiful family day" with a showcase of "edu-tainment" for the youngsters. People have given their time to perform for nothing, and although not everything is my cup of tea, I don't suppose it is meant to be. I do love the Jamaican comedian who has some hilariously clever and cruel observations of Caribbean and English cultural manners and behaviours, but sadly Miss Ebony Queen is not the drag act I was hoping for, rather a fearsome woman rapper. Another rapper, Nicky Negro, does not seem quite in the beautiful family spirit to me, with his blunt declaration that the government "keeps you in the nigger state of thinking", but it mostly goes down well.

There has been a terrible toll of knife and gun crime perpetrated mostly on, and partly by, young black men in London over the last few months. Although thankfully it hasn't specifically affected the community here in Cricklewood, the violence of these deaths is mentioned several times today as the opposite of the peace, love and pride that the Heritage Inn promotes. From the sublime to the ridiculous, at the same time I am having my own struggles to keep the kids away from the blades. A group of five under-10s has latched on to my stall, and they are enthusiastically helping me make salsa. I make sure their fingers stay away from the cut chillies, and clear of the chopping board and Tupperchef knife while I prepare tomatoes, onions, chillies, limes and coriander for processing in the Quick Chef (that's it with the white handle in this photo, next to the chopping board). It is perfectly safe for kids as long as they keep their fingers out of it, and my helpers certainly give it a good work out, whizzing the handle round and pulverising the veg. The Citrus Wonder gets a pounding too (see main picture, top).

The Heritage Inn promotes black British cultural and culinary heritage with style and panache. They also do a fantastic rum punch, which keeps me going through the lean patches early in the day. I also have to take a big swig when one of the performing poets declares that his life is "being controlled by fags". "Not this fag", I murmur. I want to cover the children's ears at that one, but my hands were covered in chopped tomato.

My salsa is popular, I give away some catalogues and do a bit of product demonstration when the music levels permit. It doesn't feel like an especially sparkling day for increasing my Tupperware business, but who knows who may contact me in the coming weeks as they are leafing through their catalogue. My fellow consultant Tracie in the West Midlands does a lot of specificaly Afro-Caribbean Tupperware parties, and it's a market I have not yet infiltrated. Anyway, mostly my day at the Heritage Inn is a bit of fun, and an interesting opportunity to be the token English Muffin. After all the rum punches, it feels pretty fine to me. I even bought a Muhammad Ali t-shirt. Apart from all his obvious admirable qualities as a sportsman, entertainer, political figure, cultural giant, and gloriously handsome man, I have always had a soft spot for Ali since I was 13 and my German pen-pal's insane mother said to me over dinner at their house in the Rheinland, "You look like Muhammad Ali".

Shoot me if I turn out like this

2007-04-05T14:55:00.000+01:00

I found these home-made videos on MySpace and YouTube. Neither of them is especially interesting for what you see, to say the very least, but the Tupperware-related songs that they use as soundtracks were new to me. This first one is a home made video for the Soft Cell track Tupperware Party, which I had never heard before. It features images of Tupperware products, which then gives way to someone doing some absurd 1980s dancing.

The man in the second video clearly has way too much time on his hands, and it is no surprise that he notes "I got no wife or lady friend". But the song is interesting. It is a rewrite of the old Seeker's hit Georgy Girl, and they sing "Hey there, Tupperware...". It seems to be a a limited edition 45 produced for a Tupperware consultants as a motivational thing, because it talks about making 1968 "the greatest year in all of our history". Shades of Tupperware Brigade record I found and blogged about last year.

The carpenter, the Zimbabweans and the gays

2007-04-01T23:25:00.000+01:00

I enjoy hearing about non-food uses of Tupperware products. This week I meet Jim, who has ordered some FridgeSmarts not for storing his veg in the fridge, but for storing biscuits. And not edible biscuits either, but those little beechwood lozenge-shaped "joining biscuits" used in carpentry. When I deliver his order, Jim takes me on a tour of his workshop, where I snap this photo after he decants his biscuits into his new FridgeSmarts. They need to be kept away from moisture, lest their precision cut size expands, and Jim reckons that the FridgeSmart is ideal for this.

Jim is a former yachtsman, and says he swore by Tupperware on board. He reckons it protects food and equipment from salt, water, wind and knocks. He suggests to me that Tupperware targets the sailing market, and I pass this on to my distributor. Jim came to Tupperware via his ex-wife, who was a consultant many years ago. Mind you, he explains, she used her "Tupperware parties" as a cover for an affair, so it could have gone either way, with Jim developing an aversion to Tupperware instead of a penchant.

I wonder if my name is being passed around the ex-pat Zimbabwean grapevine? Or perhaps some Zimbabweans have been shopping in The Savanna, where I left some catalogues last month. Either way, this week I have had a sudden flurry of phone calls and emails from UK-based Zimbabweans all wanting Tupperware. One woman explained how she and her family had to leave Zimbabwe in some haste a few years ago, and without provision for taking their housewares with them. She was thrilled to track me down through Google, and I have provided her with an order form and catalogue, which she is probably marking up as I write this, recreating her lost African kitchen.

I am volunteering at the 21st London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival at London's new BFI Southbank (the former National Film Theatre). Mostly I am involved in hospitality, making sure visiting film-makers, press and other guests are happy and catered to. This involves providing snacks, drinks and friendly chat at receptions and pre-screening events in the Green Room. So imagine my distress at finding a few drab dishes and plates for serving, and no storage at all. One quick bus trip home and, as you can see here, I have equipped the Green Room with Eleganzia Bowls, Mini Maxes and Expression dishes, all with Tupperware seals to seal up any extras and keep them fresh for the next event.

The Tupperware Syndrome

2007-03-18T10:35:00.000Z

Leanne is the first hostess to invite me back to run a second party. It's a bit of a haul for me to get out to Woodmansterne in Surrey by train, especially as today there has been a fire near Victoria, and all the trains are running late. But the journey will be a breeze compared to the stress of queueing for the ticket machines at London Bridge station. People barge through the gaps in the queue to get to their platform, and behind me, a man with Tourette's Syndrome keeps making me jump with his sudden primal barks. He also shouts "Minger!" at several women who pass.

It's worth the trip (and the queue) because Leanne and Paul have a syndrome of their own -- they are Tupperware crazy. Check out their box of seals (above) and Leanne's tower of Space Savers, brought over from South Africa (below). It turns out to be an even more successful party than their first, with Leanne and Paul earning £55 in free Tupperware and three items at half-price: that's about £120-worth of Tupperware for about £35. Leanne gives me and some other guests a lift to Purley station, so we can connect with the train back into London. We pass a church with a banner that reads "God Answers Your Knee Mail".

Earlier in the week I take the bus to Old Street to a very smart flat in a converted warehouse. Paul has persuaded his friends who own the flat to let him host a Tupperware party there. It's a fundraiser for The Food Chain, and like the three parties I ran for them last summer, it is great fun and a huge success. With a 20% donation, a raffle for some half-price items, and Gift Aid, they raise almost £250 for the HIV charity, which is a fantastic achievement. One of the guests is visiting from Yorkshire, and hatches a plan to invite me up to run a party for his mum.

I have had some interesting people contacting me recently, for possible projects of mutual benefit. An experimental music group called The Tupperware Party has contacted me via my MySpace page to discuss a possible collaboration, and the performer Timberlina (who I met as Tim at a previous party) has asked if I might offer some Tupperware as a prize in her weekly Bingo night at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern pub. I am going to have a game of bingo at the pub this week, and see how it goes.

No shirt, no service

2007-03-18T10:25:00.000Z

Catching up on the last few weeks....

It's a dark wet night when I travel out to Woodmansterne to deliver Leanne and Paul's Tupperware. On the way home, I am the only person at the station, the driving rain keeping me in the shelter. I am not complaining at all: Leanne and Paul are a lovely couple who hosted a fun party, and they have already booked another one for all the friends they couldn't squeeze into their flat last time.

It's a rare party that I can walk to. But my very near neighbour Richard, who runs Guerilla Gardening, is hosting a Sunday afternoon party at his flat. Everyone will have eaten so we go for a dessert recipe. At home, I test Tupperware's official creme caramel recipe in the microwave, and it doesn't work. Grainy on the outside, not set in the inside. There are alternative instructions for an oven-cooked version and since the Silicone King Form (i.e. loaf tin) is fine in the conventional oven, I decide to do that instead. Only that doesn't work either. Calling Tupperware HQ: your creme caramel recipe doesn't work and made me look a fool. Still, it was a good party, and I didn't have to trundle the kit bag very far. Richard's flatmate Meike blogs about the party, and she generously blamed the failure of the recipe on their oven. I am not so sure.

The catalogue has switched over to the new Spring/Summer 2007 edition, marked by a gathering of Tupperware consultants at the new distribution centre in Woking. Meanwhile I still have a stack of the previous catalogue, so while it still feels like winter in London, I decide to distribute them to South African shops in the Wimbledon area. I have done a couple of parties down there, and noticed how many Saffas live there, and I know from South African customers how popular Tupperware is with them.

I visit two branches of The Savanna and leave catalogues prominently displayed. In the tiny branch near Raynes Park station, I get the full cultural experience by buying a piece of biltong and queueing behind a man with no shirt on. It is an unusually warm March day, but really!

Can I open it? No I can't

2007-01-28T13:33:00.000Z

Can a consultant somewhere please explain how the Tupperware can opener works? This week I make a tit of myself at Leanne and Paul's party, when I cannot open a can of mandarin oranges for the Chocolate and Orange Cake. I give up and switch to their pound-shop plastic can opener!

Leanne has a cupboard full of old-style Space Savers (see above). Paul keeps dredging up cool vintage pieces from the bowels of their kitchen, including some very cute little Freezer Square Rounds only like something from a dolls' house. Their party goes really well, with a rowdy crowd made up mostly of their walking group. Leanne and Paul end up with rewards of about £80 worth of Tupperware for about £25.

To get to their house in Surrey, I take the train from London Bridge station, where I have to queue at ticket machine. It is 7pm on a Friday night, and all human life is there. Just before I get to the front of the queue, my phone rings. It's my friend Koh asking me to join him for a drink up West. I explain that I am on my way to a Tupperware party, and the heads of the young couple in front whip round. Ex-pat Australians, they have been looking for a source of Tupperware in London, so I hand over a catalogue and promise a free gift if they book a party.

This encounter, and the fact that this week's hostess Leanne hails originally from South Africa, reminds me about the Antipodean penchant for Tupperware, and when I get home I fire of emails to a couple of websites, magazines and radio stations aimed at the ex-pat crowd, and research some South African shops over in south west London, where I intend to drop off a few catalogues. I am also sad to hear this week that Collette, charming fellow consultant from South Africa, has decided to take a break from Tupperware for a while, and maybe forever.

At the Tupperware training day last week I was named number 6 consultant for personal sales for the year 2006. Seeing as I didn't start until May, I am pretty chuffed with that.

The last cake

2007-01-16T23:21:00.000Z

I do a radio interview this week for BBC Three Counties radio about my adventures in Tupperware. A smart-aleck presenter, who thinks he is funny but isn't, pre-records the interview with me, and it is broadcast a few hours later. I listen to it online the next day, and I sound surprisingly lucid and knowledgable. It is no longer available to listen to, so you will just have to take my word for that.

The presenter, like everyone, asks what happens at a Tupperware party. is it really so complex? I sell Tupperware! Let Aunt Barbara explain it for you. S/he runs parties in Brooklyn and Queens, and you can cut that accent with a knife:

Training at Head Office this weekend. When my manager Janet invites me, I am not expecting to be actually delivering the training. But I get a call from Head Office today asking me to demonstrate the Chocolate and Almond Cake recipe to fellow consultants. I have decided I am a bit bored with that cake, so this will be its swansong. That's me above preparing it at Katherine's party a few weeks ago, looking very flushed. But then that was the party where I went to the wrong house. In the wrong street. In the wrong postcode.

On the top of the tree at Christmas

2007-01-11T10:00:00.000Z

By some margin, in December I had the highest personal sales of any Tupperware consultant in the UK. So my thanks must go to my fantastic hostesses Chie, Katherine, Olga and Sara and to everyone who bought Tupperware from me last month.

In January there are some great special offers on the Space Savers kitchen storage range, and you can get this nifty little mini-FridgeSmart for only £1.50. It's great for storing chillies. And having reduced my hours at my day job from this week, I have plenty of availability for running your own Tupperware party, so let me know if you need me.

I will certainly not be doing the kind of presentation to your guests that this US consultant has filmed and put on YouTube for the benefit of her fellow consultants. Now, don't get me wrong, the Space Savers are great, I have them in my own kitchen cupboards. And in the US, the new super-sized versions go all the way to the back of your kitchen cabinets, which is a good idea. But mercy me, in her excitement for the new product, does this woman ever draw a breath? I think she was abandoned by her parents and raised by chipmunks.

Fanny around

2006-12-19T14:42:00.001Z

Every Christmas I create a retro-style Fanny Cradock buffet for the seasonal show of Star Follies, at which Mr Donald Levange and Madame Bella Borgia lead the audience in an evening of music hall, variety and steam-age karaoke.

My buffet this year includes devilled eggs, salami on Ritz crackers, a cheese-and-pineapple porcupine, asparagus rolls, Tunnocks chocolate tea cakes, and two Christmas tree shaped cheeseballs. My Tupperware products were fantastic for transporting everything to the Covent Garden Theatre Museum for last minute assembly. And because Tupperware looks so good, and so timeless, I displayed it all on the buffet table itself. Given the setting, it felt like I was creating an installation at a food museum.

Merry Christmas, and enjoy these photos of my splendid buffet, including a little shrine to Fanny Cradock herself.

How very dare you!

2006-12-15T09:29:00.000Z

Here is my sofa piled high with last week's orders, ready for sorting. I am glad to say I am back up there with the big girls: in November I was number 4 Tupperware seller in the UK.

Ok, sometimes things go slightly wrong. I burned the chocolate at my stepmother's party last month, and last week a guest caused some etiquette problems for the hostess when she arrived a bit tiddly. But this week I hit the jackpot with my three parties:

Party 1: No guests
Party 2: No sales, and I forgot the recipe
Party 3: I went to the wrong house

Julie admits that she has been a bit tentative with her invitations to her lunch party with added Tupperware. Her guests must have reflected back her casualness. Julie is a friend and a previous host, and mid-morning brings a phone call saying no-one is coming. Except one person who has already rung and said they have no money so won't be buying. Julie has prepared lunch, and she is a great cook, so I agree to go over there as planned, and prepare the Christmas muffins recipe I sourced online. But it will be friends having lunch, partly prepared in Tupperware. Not a Tupperware party. A real party, with more robust invitations, will follow in January.

Chie's party is the one with no sales. It starts off on the wrong foot. I arrive with everything to make fresh salsa, when I had in fact told Chie we were making quiche. I am slightly thrown, but we improvise and the quiche is a success, only it is made in Chie's own quiche dish while mine languishes smugly across town in my Tupperware storage cupboard. Which slightly defeats the object. Ah well. So why no sales? Well, all the guests say they want more time to think, which I cynically interpret as "Thanks, but no thanks." I agree in theory to take orders by phone and email a few days later, thinking "Yeah right", but I eat my words when the charming Chie rings a few days later with everyone's orders.

Party number 3 is jointly hosted by Katherine (who organised), and Paul and Roy (who provided the venue). And guess who got the addresses the wrong way round? Yes, 2pm on Sunday sees my pounding on Katherine's door in Tooting, even as guests are gathering at Paul and Roy's in Crystal Palace. A quick phone call and a speedy taxi ride later, I am at the right venue. Some guests were fashionably late anyway, so I was off the hook.

What had seemed like it might be my third blunder or botch of the week actually becomes one of my best parties ever. An enthusiastic and vocal crowd, charming hosts, lots of sales, and I have to say that I am on sparkling form. After making the microwave cake in the kitchen, we troop up to the first-floor living room for the rest of the show. Many of the guests are involved with Stonewall, the gay rights organisation, plus there are assorted friends, parents and other halves. Katherine and the boys split the rewards between them: £90-worth of free Tupperware and 3 half-price items.

Katherine's mum was a cheeky minx: she suggested that when no-one was looking I might be switching the cake in the microwave for one I made earlier.

A hornet's nest, a difficult guest

2006-11-26T18:10:00.000Z

Hosts sometimes become very anxious and apologetic if the turnout at their party isn't what they expect. There is really no need to apologise to me. My parties have ranged from 3 guests to 23 guests, and they have all been fun. Unfortunately, it's the host who loses out if people stay away, because I calculate their rewards (or the donation to their chosen cause) from a percentage of the party sales. I have two parties this week, and both had a turnout that was less than the host had hoped for, but both were fun and interesting for me all the same.

First to South Croydon for a party hosted by my friend James, where we bake the chocolate and almond cake in the microwave. It is his church crowd, although some of them can't make it because of another event. Still, there is a vicar, an organist and many pillars of the congregation. Andrew the organist loves most of the catalogue, and has lots of questions and comments. His partner regularly rolls her eyes to Heaven. I ask the Reverend to dust the cake with icing sugar using the Sift and Stor . He does it very grandly and cermonially and from a dramatic height, throwing in his sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life.

James earns £40-odd worth of Tupperware, and he will be experimenting with some Fridge Smarts.

Next day I am heading out west to Southfields. It's an Antipodean enclave close to the Wimbledon tennis club, the shops full of biltong and Milo. But I am required at a thoroughly English fundraiser at Lorraine's spotless house with some mums from her children's school. Lorraine's own children are beautiful, charming and polite. They tell me the products are very clever, they thank me for coming, and they remember my name when they say good night and troop off to bed. They are model guests for future parties.

We make fresh salsa in the kitchen. I have to compete with a gigantic hornet, which Lorraine eventually catches in an ingenious perspex trap-on-a-stick. I also am challenged by one rambunctious guest who has surely come straight from another party, and who offers plenty of high-volume questions and comments and feedback. I am perturbed at first, then amused, but it's clear some of the other guests are mortified. It's a scene out of Abigail's Party.

Even as I am speaking, I am thinking that some of my standard quips about the products are starting to sound aimed at this guest, and are sounding a bit unkind. But it is just my usual shtick, mostly stolen from Dixie Longate. And anyway Dixie is right: the Expressions No-Spill Tumbers with Dripless Straw Seal really are fantastic for people who are liable to spill their drinks. It's just that normally there isn't normally a guest spilling their drink as I am saying it.

This is the fundraiser for which I was asked for 50 invitations, so if anything I am relieved when there are only a dozen guests. Bigger parties can tend to break up into smaller groups and I have to shout a bit. The party raises about £50 from sales, plus another £18 from my raffle, plus a £5 entry fee donation from each guest (Lorraine's own initiative), plus 20% Gift Aid because the school is a registered charity. I am too weary to add that all up right now.

At least one of the vintage Tupperware ads that I have blogged has been removed from YouTube "due to copyright violations". I really hope the Tupperware company didn't instigate this removal. They are understandably strict about the use of their name and image, but the old ads are great fun, and it's a shame to lose them. The latest addition to YouTube is not an ad, but is the first few minutes of what appears to be a French-Canadian documentary about Tupperware ladies. My French is rubbish, so I am none the wiser.

Incidentally, the first things you see in this little clip are the No Spill Tumbers mentioned above.

Fish balls and bara brith

2006-11-19T22:34:00.000Z

Three parties since I last blogged, hosted by three fine women. Andrea in Blackheath, Martha in Chiswick, and my Auntie Sue in Redcar.

Auntie Sue keeps an immaculate house. All her guests can't quite fit in the kitchen, so we mix a cake in her living room. My sister Lois knows I am sluttish cook, and I can see from her face that she fears for Auntie Sue's carpet with every turn of the Silicone Spatula. It is lovely to reconvene the three generations who came to Lois's own party in the summer: my cousin Emma and grandmother Benny are here too. Other guests are blasts from my own past: I used to work with Edna in Marks and Spencer 25 years ago, and I shared a tent with Pat's son at a cub scout camp 30 years ago. I wasn't a cub myself, I was a bit old for it, and have never been much of a joiner anyway. My late mother was Baloo, and I went along to lend a hand.

Most of Auntie Sue's guests moved to the street when it was first built in the 1960s and raised their families there. It was Redcar's Wisteria Lane. And unlike a lot of Redcar, the street is still pristine and in great shape forty years later. And the the ladies themselves don't look so bad either. Anyway, Auntie Sue does really well with her party, and is rewarded with: £50 worth of Tupperware for £10!

Meanwhile in West London's Chiswick, Martha uses her party as a good excuse to get together friends, relatives and neighbours for a natter, to meet baby Ezra and to get some Tupperware. Martha is donating her rewards to the neo-natal unit that took care of Ezra when he was born prematurely, and she raises around £65, not including Gift Aid. There is a very cosmpolitan buffet, reflecting the family's heritage: a luscious bara brith made by Martha's mum who had come up from the Vale of Glamorgan specially, and sensational Kosher fish balls from her mother-in-law.

I haven't been winning many prizes or accolades for my Tupperware sales recently. In fact I haven't even made the roll of honour for the last two months because my sales have not gone above £600. But everyday I stand on my Tupperware branded bathmat (above), and think postive thoughts.

Coming up next week: my friend James is hosting a party for his friends in Croydon. He has gay friends and church friends, and one or two who straddle the categories. I am not sure which crowd is coming along. And the long-awaited fundraiser for Our Lady Queen of Heaven School, for which I was asked for 50 invitations...

A word from our sponsor

2006-11-07T22:57:00.000Z

Two more vintage television ads for Tupperware have recently appeared on YouTube. Although made ten years apart, both ads feature the classic stack of three Wonder Bowls, the original deep round Tupperware bowl. Sadly they are not currently available in the UK, although if you ever get to visit me at home, I will show you mine.

The first ad is from the US, early 1960s. I already blogged back in August another ad from the same campaign, with the same creamy-voiced narrator.

This second one is a French ad from the 70s. It is almost a mini-musical, shot in long takes and using that slightly discordant chanson-style singing which can grate on the non-French ear.

Quiet but busy

2006-11-06T21:01:00.000Z

It is quiet in my Tupper-world. A couple of small parties and a ginormous email order for £300-worth of Space Savers (right) keep me ticking over. It's the calm before the storm: I have 2 or 3 parties a week for the next few weeks.

The organiser of the upcoming fundraising party at Our Lady Queen Of Heaven school rings me and asks for another 20 invitations. I have already given her 30. I think we are gonna need a bigger boat.

This week, in another part of my life, I also have a taste of what it can be like when you get a sudden burst of business. I am the UK distributor of Calendario Romano, an Italian photographic calendar that features portraits of handsome young priests. It is sold at news stands in Rome as a souvenir of the Vatican, but when I came across it, I thought it would probably appeal to a broader church. The photographer keeps me stocked, and I sell 500 or so most years, via my website. I donate £1 from every sale to my favourite charity The Food Chain.

I often get press enquiries, which result in publicity for the calendar in magazines aimed at women, gay men, Catholics, heathens, ironists, all sorts, and bloggers latch on to it every now and again. Anyway, this weekend I am flicking through The Observer newspaper, and am staggered to see a 2-page spread about the calendar. It's just a short article but they print all twelve portraits and my website address for anyone interested in buying it.

And Heavens above, are they interested. I have sold around 150 calendars in the last 24 hours. My shoulder is dislocated from several trips to the Post Office with huge stacks of calendars.

The relevance to my Tupperware life? None really, other than how easy and random it can be to get into the papers without even trying. A few journalists have contacted me over the last few months, all fired up to write about my life as an urban male Tupperware Lady. But their editors reject the story every time. Also, a certain celebrity may be wanting me to run a Tupperware party for her, I hear from a mutual friend. Watch this space. But don't hold your breath.

Nobody's perfect

2006-10-23T00:03:00.000+01:00

Katie, noting that the Quick Chef funnel looks like Mr Potato Head's leg

The Chocolate Almond cake has long been my most popular party recipe. It is tasty, easy, good for communal cooking and for showcasing the Tupperware. And impressive: a chocolate cake in 15 minutes!

Until tonight. As always, I put the chocolate into a Microplus Pitcher and melt it in the microwave for one minute on Medium power. Trouble is, after 30 seconds, one guest murmurs "I can smell burning...". I yank open the microwave to see the clear pitcher opaque with smoke. Taking the lid off, theatrical thick smoke boils out like from a witch's cauldron. Some of the chocolate has burned, and I toss it in the bin, but we rescue most of it.

It seems my hostess's microwave doesn't work on Medium Power, only Full and Defrost. Which is a problem because the cake needs to be cooked on Medium. I compromise with short bursts of Full and a bit on Defrost, but it's no substitute and the cake is a bit of a failure in both taste (burnt chocolate) and texture (not properly cooked). Oh, and I forgot the baking powder and had to chuck it in at the end.

Now normally I would be freaking out, but the pressure is off because the hostess is my stepmother Gill, who has convened some friends for a fundraising party for the Noah's Ark Children's Hospice in nearby Barnet. Sales + my raffle + Gift Aid lead to a £60 donation.

On the train back to Liverpool Street station, a group of young women scream their heads off and blatantly graffiti the carriage with a black marker pen. I report them to the station police when we arrive.

It's about midnight and at my bus stop outside Liverpool Street, a well-dressed, well hammered woman peers into my open kitbag, swaying and breathing through her mouth. "Tupperware," I explain, "just been doing a party." She flicks at the silicone cake tin, from which my Dad (below) has washed all trace of the dodgy cake and I explain what it is.

"Got any salad boxshes?"

"Loads. Here, have a catalogue. That's my name on the back."

"Is that bus going to London Bridge?", she slurs. I tell her yes, and she lurches on to the bus, doors closing on her. Last thing I see is her plonking heavily down, flicking through the catalogue barely focussing.

You can't get it no more, sweetheart

2006-10-19T22:37:00.000+01:00

Check out this ugly-looking thing. A Capodimonte Tupperware Lady. She was only £2 on eBay. I have put her in the kitchen.

At the Notre Dame School autumn fayre, I offer an elderly woman one of my parmesan and rosemary muffins. She looks and sounds a lot like Catherine Tate's "Nan" character. Soon afterwards, I read in an interview with Catherine Tate in The Observer that she actually went to that school. Spooky.

Hello, would you like a muffin?

How much are they, sweetheart?

They are free, I made them this morning in my Tupperware silicone muffin form

I'm not hungry darlin', but if they're free I'll take one. Put it my handbag.

I am your local Tupperware consultant, would you like to see the latest products?

You can't it get it no more, sweetheart.

How do you mean?

They closed down, darlin'. Can't get it no more, Tupperware.

No, this *is* Tupperware. It's back.

Goodbye sweetheart.

Deliver us from evil / deliveries from Tupperware

2006-10-09T23:03:00.000+01:00

The Pink Paper has a spread of photos from last week's Autumn Fayre at St John's Waterloo. In this one, I am ignoring Sir Ian McKellen in favour of my customers, including my friend Caspar (studying the catalogue).

The following Saturday, I set up a stall at a very different autumn fayre, a low-key affair at the Notre Dame Catholic girls high school opposite the Imperial War Museum. Teenage girls amble up in twos and threes, point at a random bit of Tupperware on my table and bark "How much is that?" I tell them the price, then they run off laughing. There is some sort of tiresome game of dares going on here.

An elegant elderly black woman approaches in a Sunday-best hat, leaning heavily on her stick as she inspects my wares. "Ah Tupperware," she sighs, "I was a Tupperware lady in New York in the 70s, and again when I first came to England." She jerks her head to her right, the side on which she uses the stick: "couldn't do it now, darlin'." Ah well, another potential recruit gone west.

Lots of people take a catalogue, but there are only four entries for my free prize draw. Una from Kennington wins the Mini-Max. The teachers are nice, if a bit fearsome. I think they could throw a good Tupperware party if they let their hair down.

Back home, the Tupperware order arrives for Emily, who ordered by post last week. I ring her to arrange delivery, and Emily calmly explains that while shopping in Peter Jones this morning, she went into labour two weeks early, and baby Gabriel arrived a couple of hours ago. I leave Emily to it, and her husband rings me next day to arrange things. I hop on a bus over to their house near Battersea Dogs Home. As Emily opens the door, I chime "It's your second special delivery of the week!" Gabriel is snoozing in a tiny hammock. He would fit into a FridgeSmart.

We'll have a gay old time

2006-10-01T12:11:00.000+01:00

The autumn fayre St John's Church in Waterloo has been dubbed "Homo Homemakers". It aims to celebrate the domestic skills of lesbian and gay Londoners, and it also implicitly questions the emphasis on the hedonistic and sexual areas of life, which dominate many people's perceptions of gay folk. The organiser, journalist and author Rupert Smith, explains more in an interview in this week's Time Out London, where I am also quoted burbling on about Tupperware.

In fact, I was up till the early hours, but I was not off my tits on E in a sweaty club in Vauxhall, I was baking muffins in my silicone muffin form. I stash about 60 muffins in the new BreadSmart, and pile most of my demo kit into the back of a taxi for the short journey to St Johns. The trestle tables are already set up, and I have a key spot at the front of the hall. To my left, two nice lesbian women display their hand-made cushions, but the stall to the right is empty for ages until virtuoso pastry chef Gerhard Jenne and his crew from Konditor and Cook arrive. It's a battle of the muffins, although pitting mine next to Gerhard's was like Carol Vorderman arriving at a party in the same dress as Penelope Cruz.

Guest of honour Sir Ian McKellen gives a sweet and funny opening speech, and I go into Tupperware Man autopilot from noon until 5, demonstrating up a storm. Sir Ian comes over to ice a gingerbread man on Gerhard's stall. He ignores my Tupperware, but he is X-Man Magneto after all, so his affinity is with metal not plastic.

Everybody smiles when they pass my stall. People say "Hang on, you really sell Tupperware? You really run Tupperware parties? You would really come to my house and run one for me". Yes, yes, and oh my dear yes. I run a prize draw for a Fresh and Pure ice tray, which is won by Luke from Notting Hill. On their entry tickets, 22 people have said "Yes" or "Maybe" to hosting a Tupperware party of their own, so I will be contacting them all this week.

Brian on the bric-a-brac stall has a stack of 1960s Tupperware beakers in milky pastel shades. You can just see them over my right shoulder in the main photo.

My friend Kazu has the stall behind me, with his beautiful Japanese floral arrangements. We agree to recommend each others' services to couples who are are having civil partnership ceremonies. He can do the flowers, I can do a Tupperware gift list. And Kazu gives me one of his cool-looking arrangements to take home.

This was a really fun event, I met some interesting new people and caught up with some old friends. Friends and customers Laura, Claire, Casper, Bo and Adam all dropped in to say hello and eat cakes. For a full set of photos of the event, visit Kate's Flickr page.

Next stop, the Notre Dame Catholic Girls High School autumn fayre this coming Saturday!

Travelling with Tupperware

2006-09-30T18:36:00.000+01:00

Tupperware is making me an explorer in my own city. Two parties this week, both in areas of London that are new to me. I had never even heard of Kent House station: it's not that far from me, but I have to take two commuter trains to get there. The trains are packed and my kitbag is in everyone's way. I just have to brazen it out. The roads and pavements around the station are all gravelled, very odd.

At Claire's house, I throw my cloth over her kitchen table and two-year-old Edward promptly spits up a wad of half-chewed peanuts on it. Bless wet wipes. But after this inauspicious start, it is a nice party with friendly people and excellent snacks, especially Tony's bean, spinach and mango wraps, slice on a diagonal. I miss my last train connection and have to take the 468 bus from Herne Hill. This is the bus on which someone was murdered last week. Sleepy and punchy, I start imagining it was me. People are rifling through my kitbag trying to establish my identity: "I don't know who he was, but this silicone spatula is fantastic."

Next day Viv convenes some friends and neighbours in a community centre behind Stockwell tube station. She has a lot of no-shows, but Viv and her 3 guests have fun as we use the centre's kitchen to knock up a quiche without pastry and some peach smoothies. One guest is really keen to book me for a fundraiser at her local Catholic old peoples' home, but she needs to check first that Mother Superior wants to be hostess. I hope so, because the new Accessories Organiser will be fabulous to stop her rosaries getting tangled.

Two parties in two days, plus it's the busiest time of year in my day job and I am doing it full-time at the moment. I am knackered, it's raining, and even though I run with the kitbag when the bus passes me, I just miss it. With 20 minutes to go before the next one, I slip into the little Portugese bar by the bus stop -- I am in the heart of London's Little Lisbon -- and order an ice-cold Sagres beer. It is my first pause for a rest all week, and the beer tastes sensational.

A man alone

2006-09-23T13:33:00.000+01:00

My customers think it is interesting and fun that their Tupperware Lady is a man. My fellow consultants also love it that I am on board, and everyone was very sweet and encouraging to me at the Tupperware Jubilee a few weeks ago. But I am starting to think that my gender is a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting new consultants.

Once a week or so, Head Office will forward to me an enquiry from someone in my area who is interested in working for Tupperware, always a woman, and I give them a ring. It nearly always goes to voice mail, so I leave a bright and breezy message introducing myself and leaving my number. Not one single person has ever rung me back in six months. I thought it was men who are supposed to never ring you back?

Now I know that people are busy, especially if you are running a home and family and maybe doing a "real" job too. I also know from other consultants that recruiting new people is tough for everyone. But these are not cold calls, they are people who have specifically contacted Tupperware and asked for information on becoming a consultant.

So here is my theory. They do not expect a man to ring them, so when one does, it puts them off. For the most part, Tupperware is proudly a community of women, and it is a very attractive and supportive environment for women to work in, especially if you have not been part of the male-oriented working world for a while, or ever. I think that when the prospective consultant hears my message, they think (or perhaps it's subconscious) "Hang on, yet another male manager, even at Tupperware. Forget it."

I sympathise, because part of the reason this is such an interesting venture for me is negotiating and fitting in to the congenial and overwhelming female world of Tupperware. I find there are some advantages to being a male consultant, but I think this may be the key disadvantage. If my fears are true, and potential recruits are put off the moment they hear my voice, I will not be getting very far in Tupperware.

Londoners are a tough crowd in general, never mind in recruiting. No parties this week again, and even the offer of coffee, muffins, new catalogues and free gifts has not tempted any of my previous customers and hosts to come to my Open House afternoon today. I sit here alone with, as my photo above shows, a pot of coffee, a tray of Parmesan muffins and the Coronation Street omnibus on ITV2.

So it's been a slightly downbeat week for your Tupperware man. But next week I have two big parties and the Homo Homemakers autumn fayre, which will be opened by Sir Ian McKellen. The following weekend, I have a stall at an Autumn Fayre at the Notre Dame Catholic Girls High School down the road. You can't say I am not creating a diverse customer base!

Time out... and Time Out

2006-09-15T21:37:00.000+01:00

No parties this week. I can take a bit of time to gather my thoughts and familiarise myself with the new products for Autumn/Winter.

When I started as a Tupperware consultant back in May, I decided I would give it until September. If it wasn't working out by then, I would jack it in. Well, I have decided to continue. Right now I am the sixth best selling consultant in the UK and Ireland, and I already have some ideas for expanding my business during the autumn and winter. I still haven't managed to find anyone to work with me as a little London team, but I am hopeful.

Later this month Time Out London magazine will be running an article in their Gay section about the "Homo Homemakers" church fayre at St Johns, Waterloo, where I will have a stall. The organisers are very excited that Tupperware is on board. A journalist contacts me and asks for a few words about my involvement, and I pontificate about lesbians and gay men celebrating their inner hausrau.

I get a party request from Viv during the week. She is just back from Belgium where she fell for Tupperware's UltraPlus range and wants some for herself. This is the priciest range in the catalogue, unique plastic ovenware which can go in the freezer and microwave as well as the conventional oven. It comes in black, and looks very stylish. It is cheaper than Le Creuset, but lasts just as long and is more versatile. And because it is plastic, you don't sprain a wrist trying to get it out of the bottom cupboard. I thought Tupperware for the oven was a relatively new idea, but I have stumbled on an ultra-corny 1985 US television ad on YouTube for UltraPlus's predecessor Ultra 21, which came in a rather naff cream colour. But didn't everything in 1985?

Update 9 November 2006: Since I wrote this blog entry, YouTube has removed the Ultra 21 ad for violating its rules, so I have removed the link. Shame, because it was a fun piece of Tupper-history

The Catford Wives

2006-09-07T19:33:00.000+01:00

A very long day. Fellow consultant Collette arrives at my place at 8:00 a.m. After rooibos tea and scrambled eggs, we head off to Luton by train. The Holiday Inn near Luton Airport is the venue for the first Jubilee meeting of Tupperware UK and Ireland since the relaunch a year or so ago. The Jubilee recognises the top consultants, introduces new products and the new catalogue, and generally gets us all fired up with the love of Tupperware.

I am the only male consultant. Marc from Blackpool is on holiday this week, so he can't make it. I do think I approach the work a bit differently to other consultants, both procedurally and philosphically. Maybe that has something to do with being a man. But probably it has more to do with other factors: as a gay man living in the centre of a very diverse city, my parties have a much broader range of social, ethnic and income demographics than many other consultants'. My parties are often run for groups of colleagues in their work place, or for friends who live wildly scattered, so I have to be prepared for anything and anyone. At one party, one of the guests turned out to be someone I had met on a dating website. He said nothing, and neither did I.

Summer has felt a bit slow Tupper-wise, so I am surprised but thrilled to be named number 6 consultant for summer sales in the UK and Ireland. I am rewarded with a new and improved Quick Chef, Tupperware's hand-operated food processor, to add to my demonstration kit.

Another new item in the Autumn/Winter catalogue is the Multi-Server, a Tupperware classic which has been off-menu for a while. Customers have been begging for it, but as a new kid on the block, I didn't even know what it was. When the Managing Director whips out a Multi-Server onstage and announces its return, my fellow consultants start whooping and screaming. So what is this thing? Well, it is a rice cooker, a fish poacher, a defroster, a cool box, you name it. I am told it cooks pasta without continuously boiling water, but my jury is still out on that one, and I am going to try it for myself this weekend.

Consultants are showered with gifts, prizes and a chance to buy all the new items for our demo kit. On the train home I am absolutely laden (see photo above): a BreadSmart bread bin with separate bread boad, Tupperware branded umbella, carrier bag of smaller items, my own backpack and my prize Quick Chef which is all dragged up in florist's wrap and a bow.

Back home, I have barely half an hour before I am boarding the 171 bus to Catford to run a party for Maria. I had already packed my big black kit bag last night, thank goodness. Sadly, my handy trolley-bag on wheels is history already: it has taken a lot of punishment these last few months as I hauled it through puddles, across cobbles and on and off buses and trains. It now has a dodgy wheel, the zips are broken, and a bag of flour leaked on the way home a few weeks ago. As it happens, a new trolley bag is the latest incentive Tupperware is offering for recruiting a new consultant, so I will see what I can do.

Maria is an ex-Tupperware consultant, and she intends to stay that way (I tried). Six of her friends barrel in, and the next few hours are a blur of scandal aired, bowls burped, ciggies smoked, consultant teased, salsa prepared, teenage daughters compared and contrasted, and a lot of Chardonnay poured. And it's a good party for Maria, she comes out with £100 worth of Tupperware for less than £50.

I am home just before midnight and go straight to bed. As I drift off, I hatch a plan to host a weekend Open House at my home in the next few weeks for everyone on my mailing list. I can show off the new products, bake a few muffins in the Silicone Muffin Form which is a special offer for September, and give away some of the bits and bobs I have picked up at the Jubilee (an orange peeler, an thing for lifting boiled eggs out of the pan, etc.). If you are on my mailing list, stand by for an invitation. If you are not on the list, feel free to join.

"Who's the happiest housewife in the kitchen?"

2006-09-03T09:55:00.000+01:00

When I am not dithering in front of the wardrobe trying to choose an outfit for Wednesday's national Tupperware Jubilee, I am marching around my house to The Tupperware Brigade. This is the song that was recorded especially by the King Brothers for the 1967 UK Tupperware distributors' conference, and which I bought on eBay recently.

The photo above shows the Kings at the start of their career in the 1950s. From my research, the Tupperware promo record seems to be one of their last recordings. The cod military march style has a bit of a Colonel Bogey vibe, and the singing style has a touch of Herman's Hermits. Composer and youngest King brother Denis has gone on to have a long career writing TV theme tunes, including the classic "Galloping Home", the theme to the 1970s series The Adbventures of Black Beauty. The lyrics are by humourist John Junkin, who died earlier this year. I have had a very nice email from Denis King today, after I emailed him via his agent on Saturday (bless Google), and he gives me permission to include the song on my blog.

Listen to The Tupperware Brigade.

The Tupperware Brigade
Music by Denis King, Lyrics by John Junkin

Who's the happiest housewife in the kitchen?
The one with Tupperware on the shelf
I tell you any housewife finds that it's bewitchin'
It's light, it's bright, the price is right
And you can make some cash yourself
We're giving a party soon and you can come for free
So come along and see, we're sure that you'll agree

Chorus
Tupperware, Tupperware
Is the finest kitchenware that ever was made
Tupperware, Tupperware
Fall in and join the Tupperware brigade

They've got a range of kitchen goods that are the best
Why don't you come along and put them to the test?
Once you've tried them you'll agree it's true
All the things that we are telling you.

Chorus

Collecting Tuppernalia

2006-09-02T23:42:00.000+01:00

Tupperware consultants in the US offer online parties. I think the idea is that hosts invite their friends to shop at the consultant's own Tupperware website within a given time period, and the host earns their percentage reward from all the sales. There are no online parties in the UK yet, although I offer existing customers the chance to put in additional orders by email, and to pay by Paypal.

I don't sell or buy Tupperware on eBay (it isn't allowed) but I do keep an eye open for any interesting memorabilia. It could be something I can use at a party, like the German key chains with miniature Tupperware products that I wear on my apron, or just something that amuses me, like the 1980s Tupperware cookbook.

Most intriguingly, I found on eBay a 40-year old EP record by the King Brothers. It was recorded especially for the Fifth Tupperware Distributors Concert in London in 1967, and alongside some showtunes it features a rousing song called The Tupperware Brigade. Like most people these days, I don't have a record player, so on a visit to my friends Been and Mike this weekend, I asked Mike if he could help me transfer it into a format that I share with visitors to my website and blog. Mike is a record producer and musician, so I figured he would have the technology. There is no publisher listed on the record or sleeve, so I cannot ask anyone for permission to include it, but I have found composer Denis King's agent through Google, and have emailed him and asked if it is OK. I will upload the song as soon as I have figured out how to do it, and assuming Mr King agrees.

I spot a very old Space Saver in my friends' kitchen (see pic), not to mention a Mix and Stor without a seal, and the seal and blender of a long-lost Quick Shake. I will put a new Quick Shake in the post to Been and Mike to say thanks for The Tupperware Brigade.

Market forces

2006-08-26T23:33:00.000+01:00

The new Autumn/Winter catalogue will be launched in a couple of weeks' time. I still have a big pile of the Spring/Summer edition, so today I start to distribute them in my neighbourhood with my contact details stamped on the back, and hopefully I will drum up some local parties.

First I leave a small pile of catalogues in a rack by the mailboxes at Metro Central Heights, a huge residential block down the road. Then I take half a dozen more to Borough Market, a real foodie hang-out which is only a 15 minute walk from my house. I was just going to just leave them on a random bench, but while shopping I spy a perfect spot on this vegetable stall and arrange the catalogues between the mushrooms and the asparagus.

I check at the Paul Smith shop at Borough Market. As I wrote a few posts ago, they are selling Tupperware Mini-Maxes for an eye-watering £12 each. I have now sent two friendly emails to the buyer at Paul Smith, offering to run a party if they want one, but they haven't replied. I don't quite have the brass neck to leave some catalogues in the shop, but it occurs to me that Tupperware Head Office would not be happy that they are selling Tupperware in their shop at all, let alone at such a mark-up. I might just have to tip them off.

I stumble across this US television ad for Tupperware, from sometime in the 1960s. Given the nature of the free gifts, there is absolutely no ambiguity that all guests and hosts were expected to be women:

Home boy

2006-08-24T00:26:00.000+01:00

Redcar, the town where I grew up, is used to invasions. Geordies descend for the races, pensioners pile off coaches for a picnic on the beach, and hordes of local youngsters fill the pubs every Friday night done up to the nines. This week, Hollywood is in town. A stretch of the sea front has been dressed as 1940s Dunkirk for the new film version of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement. Hundreds of locals have had 1940s haircuts for £50 a day as extras. Then as if it couldn't get any more exciting, I hop on the train from London Kings Cross and rock up at Redcar East station with my Tupperware kit bag for some hometown parties.

Sadly, my friend Nicky has to cancel, but my sister Lois has friends and family coming over to hang out in her new kitchen and see what I am up to with this Tupperware lark. My cousin Emma, Auntie Sue and grandma Benny form a 3-generations tableau in one corner, all looking fantastic and years younger than 30, 60 and 90. My brother Martyn brings his daughter Devan who falls asleep on the couch before I even start. My nephews Oliver and Charlie are too busy skateboarding to come along, but Oliver poses for a photo with his mum and four Mini Maxes (above).

Given that I travel by train, I decide to leave a lot of kit behind in London. But the guests keep me busy with questions and repeat demonstrations as we make fresh salsa in the Quick Chef. The Happy Chopper is today's big hit, I sell four of them. Lois is rewarded with £60 worth of Tupperware for just over £20, so she is very pleased with that.

Auntie Sue is keen for her own party some time soon, so I agree to talk dates and come back up to Redcar before long. Nicky wants to reschedule her postponed party too, so it will definitely be worth my while to bring back the Tupperware roadshow in the next month or so.

There are two weeks to go until the Jubilee meeting in Luton, when all the UK TUpperware consultants will be getting together. There are no monthly league tables for July and August, just one combined league table for the whole summer which will be announced at the Jubilee. I am doing OK I think, but have had a quiet few weeks. I might scrape into the Top 10, who knows?

I come back to London to a very alarming voice mail message from my manager Janet. She wants me to take the role of Prince MiniMax in some sort of Tupperware panto. We'll see...

Tupperware takes the stage

2006-08-13T17:01:00.000+01:00

I have often heard Baylen Leonard's Tennessee tones on BBC London 94.9, so it was a nice surprise when he emailed me asking for a Tupperware party. And even better that he only lives 5 minutes from me. With not so far to drag the kit, I decide to take absolutely everything: two big bags of Tupperware. And just as Baylen had promised, he did indeed have a stage in his living room. Centre stage and spot-lit, my Tupperware has never looked so glamorous (photo above).

Baylen's is an ideal Tupperware party household. His aunt was a Tupperware lady in Tennessee, so it's in the blood. He has a German flatmate (they love Tupperware, that lot), and his mostly American guests are very funny, loud, enthusastic and camp. The Happy Chopper and Fresh and Pure Ice Tray are especially well received. Baylen is rewarded with a free pair of Stuffables and a half-price Happy Chopper.

My gay and lesbian customers have always been really good to me, so I agree instantly when guest Tim invites me to run a Tupperware stall at an Autumn Fayre run by the House of Homosexual Culture on Saturday 30 September. This event will be "a celebration of the domestic arts, exploring our hidden identities as “homo home-makers” and asking just why we're so damn good at these things". Looking forward to this one.

During the week I had a message via my website www.TupperwareMan.co.uk from Nicole, a German Tupperware Lady who is passing through London this week. She wants to see a UK catalogue so I agreed to meet her and her husband Michael for coffee on Saturday morning and to exchange catalogues. Our waitress snags one of catalogues for herself ("My mother was a Tupperware Lady at home in Brazil") but we still manage an exchange. I am totally amazed to learn that there is a Tupperware consultant per 1000 people in Germany. For 5 million Londoners, there are probably about six of us at most, with only me covering central London. And still I can't manage to recruit anyone to work with me!

And Tupperware is about to hit the road. I am visting family and friends in the North East, and I have agreed to run a seaside Tupperware party for my sister next weekend in Redcar. See you there.

Paul Smith in £12 Mini-Max rip-off scandal

2006-08-06T11:35:00.000+01:00

When they hear about my fancy summer holiday in Mauritius, people say "Wow, you must be doing really well with Tupperware". It's true that I am doing pretty well, but not that well: in fact I won the holiday in a competition at Harrods last summer.

It is sometimes a pain using public transport to get myself and my kit bag to parties. So I am pleased to discover a direct train from my local train station, Elephant and Castle, to Mill Hill Broadway where Stephanie has requested a Tupperware party with her friends. On the phone, Stephanie told me it will be a group of pensioners, and I fear the whiff and dead hand of the nursing home. On the contrary, I arrive to find a feisty, noisy and vivacious bunch who jostle each other to get into Stephanie's conservatory to admire my display table.

Two weeks after every party, I have to haul the orders back to the host's place. Every Thursday, the Tupperware orders from the week before last are delivered to me from France. I work on Thursdays at the university, and there is no-one back at home to sign for the delivery, so it all arrives at my office. I stay back after work to unpack the huge cardboard boxes, sort everything into separate parties and individual orders, and pack them into Tupperware carrier bags ready to deliver to the host. The products are light, and for most parties, I can get everything into several oversized heavy-duty carrier bags from Aldi and Lidl, which I can easily shlep onto the train, bus or tube. For bigger parties, or if several people have ordered large items like a Salad Spinner, Bread Box or Cutting Board, I have to take a taxi.

On Friday this week I deliver all the orders from Daniel's party (see Hot Hot Hot below). This is definitely a taxi job: three large cardboard boxes, all brim-full, and one of them just containing Daniel's free and half-price rewards. I use a local cab firm and my driver can neither drive, speak English nor even find London Bridge, never mind the small side-street off Borough Market where Daniel's studio is. At one point we are stopped by the police when he tries to do a U-turn in rush hour traffic.

Daniel has reconvened a follow-up party for guests to drop in for a drink and to collect their Tupperware. I hand out the bagged-up and labelled orders, and adult men and women clap and rip open their packages. I feel like a 21st century Tupperware Santa Claus.

Daniel tells me that he has noticed that the Borough Market branch of Paul Smith, round the corner from his office, is selling Mini-Maxes. This seems odd, surely he is mistaken. I pop round to check. As well as his own range of clothing and accessories, Paul Smith's shops also sell an eccentric selection of toys and other products that have caught the designer's eye, or "products that Paul has found on his travels" as the website says. Sure enough, there are two Mini-Maxes there, the smallest 700ml size but in orange and green, not the yellow that I sell:

I over-casually quiz the chap behind the counter about them, wondering out loud if people ever ask about other colours and sizes. He admits that no-one has ever bought one, and at a whopping £12 (twice the catalogue price) I am not surprised. I glean that all Paul Smith shops have the same non-Paul Smith products, so it is someone centrally, maybe Paul Smith himself, who chose to display the Mini-Maxes. I leave a couple of catalogues and my contact details, in case the Tupperware fan in question wants a party.

Hot hot hot

2006-07-21T13:19:00.000+01:00

It's the hottest July day ever, and what am I doing? Dragging my trolley bag down a cobbled street by London Bridge to a warehouse above the Clink Prison Museum. Then I haul it up five stories (there's no lift) through a warren of studio spaces to Daniel's office for tonight's party. Daniel came to my stall at the Merrick Square fete a few weeks ago and got the Tupperware bug. Tonight, 15 or so of his friends, colleagues and neighbours come to prepare Salsa and Chocolate Almond Cake.

A pattern is emerging at my parties. Hosts and guests often start amused (and a bit bemused) by the fact that they find themselves at a Tupperware party. There is often some good-natured sending up of the products, the party format, even my good self. Tonight sure enough there is a jokey "oooh" when I collapse a Mini-Max, and some fits of giggles when I enthuse about a FridgeSmart. But if I do my job properly, bit by bit the enthusiasm slowly becomes genuine. Someone will start making notes on their order form. Someone else will say spontaneously "Now that is good" and everyone will laugh, but secretly agree. I do milk it a bit too of course: I separate the two parts of the scissors with a bit of drama, and I ask people to describe the pleasing feeling of the silicone spatula leaving no trace of cake mix in the bowl.

Daniel's guests do him proud. With his free and half-price products, he ends up with £125 worth of Tupperware for £30. Even he is shocked at how well he has done.
I manage to accommodate some off-menu Mini-Max requests: delivery takes two weeks, but Amanda needs two Mini-Maxes tomorrow (fine, I have a couple of extras at home), and Gary wants his sent to Costa Rica, where he will be living for a while. Anneliese tells me that a friend has already booked a party with me next week. This turns out to be the American radio presenter I spoke to the other day. He mentioned that he has a stage in his living room "if I need it".

It's only a short bus ride home, but the long day, the heat and my eagerness to be home kick in, and I jump off the bus without my kit bag of Tupperware! The 343 bus disappears round Elephant and Castle with my kit in it. I stay calm(ish) and ring London Transport travel info. They connect me with the relevant bus garage, who radio the driver. I am instructed to meet the bus at a specific stop in 45 minutes' time. I am happy to report that I am now reunited with my well travelled kit bag.

I am off to Mauritius with my sister for a week. See you in August for more Tupperware.

From Old Kent Road to Mayfair

2006-07-18T16:00:00.000+01:00

I live on the cheapest street on the Monopoly board. Today's party is on the most expensive one. Mayfair is far too posh for public transport, so I have to trundle my trolley bag along Piccadilly, dodging the crowds, and turn into Park Lane until I reach the bijou offices of Hanson Capital, a privately owned merchant banking firm. Annelise is PA to the Chairman, and a fellow volunteer for The Food Chain, and she has invited me to run an after-work party with her colleagues. It is another sweltering day in London, but the impeccably groomed young women look as cool as cucumbers in a FridgeSmart.

It might be my poshest location, but Heavens above, the communal kitchen microwave looks like something from Bruce Forsyth's conveyor belt in 1977. I have to adjust the power and the timing just to melt the chocolate for the Chocolate Almond Cake, let alone to cook the thing. But needless to say, the recipe and the flower silicone form are as reliable as ever.

The guests throw themselves into the Tupperware buying with gusto and good humour, and even the boss's delightful Filipina housekeeper has been chauffered in to equip her kitchen with whatever she wants. This turns out to be my highest spending party yet which, after an additional contribution from guest Jenny, and Gift Aid from the Chancellor, nets a donation of £220 to The Food Chain. What's more, three of the guests get to add a half-price item of their choice to their order, saving around £50 between them. If I add in Adam's and Laura's recent fundraising parties, my parties have generated around £320 for the charity, and as a volunteer I know this goes a very long way and is much appreciated.

During a quick visit to Blackpool at the weekend, I meet up with Marc, the only other Tupperware Man in the country. Younger than me, but an old pro when it comes to Tupperware (and pretty much everything else), Marc gives me the Tupper-gossip in his back garden over ice tea in Expressions tumblers. Sadly, it looks like holiday plans will prevent Marc from attending the Jubilee in September. This is the first gathering of Tupperware consultants from all over the country since the company relaunched. I will be the only man there, and will of course be reporting on it for my blog.

Greek chic

2006-07-08T18:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the terrible suicide bombings in London. Some reports at the time mentioned that the explosives were in a Tupperware-style box: it was actually a large empty plastic rice container. Memories of that awful day were on my mind as I haul two holdalls of Tupperware home onto the 25 bus (orders are delivered to my office, not my home). A year earlier, on that very bus I had been caught up in the chaos around the explosion at Aldgate station on my way to work. I was turfed off the bus right by the station, just minutes after the explosion. We passengers all had to hurry of the cordoned-off area, not knowing the seriousness of what had happened under the street.

I work in an area of London with a high Muslim population, and it occurs to me that sadly if it was one of the many young Muslim men on my bus who were carting large, mysterious and curiously light holdalls, he would attract some suspicious looks. I am happy and proud to live in a this diverse city, to where people from all over the world come to be themselves and live good lives.

Back to my parties. Last Sunday I take a short bus ride to Rotherhithe to Lia's house by the Thames. There is a cool breeze off the river, and at one point in the middle of my demo, a pirate galleon sails by, advertising the film Pirates of the Caribbean. It is the hottest day of the year so far. London is subdued and sluggish, and so am I. Put it down to the heat and England crashing out of the World Cup on penalties.

Lia and her two guests are vivacious young Greek women. Lia is a big Tupperware fan, and wants to se what's new. She reckons she already has 75% of what's in the current catalogue. It means I can leave some things in my kit bag and ask Lia to demonstrate her personal items. There is lots of laughter and chat (in English and in Greek) and nice snacks. All the guests' mothers back in Greece swear by their "Tuppers", especially the Quick Shake and the Jel Ring.

It's a small but perfectly formed party, and I feel sure I will see the ladies again. Sophia is taking a catalogue home and will make a further order after payday. Lia is a Tupperware fanatic of old, and will be reqesting the new catalogue in September. Theodora is throwing a housewarming party soon, and is keen to earn some free and half-price Tupperware by hosting a party. And I seem to have passed some sort of test, because she adds "when one Greek likes you, they all like you".

We make the Quiche without Pastry. I stick with broccoli and stilton but feel pleased with myself when my suggestion of using roast peppers and feta meets with a Greek chorus of approval.

(Fridge) Smarty pants

2006-07-01T21:28:00.000+01:00

Another training session at Tupperware HQ this week. One of the challenges I set myself is to sell more FridgeSmarts, the vegetable storage boxes with air vents. I have rarely sold one, probably because I haven't really used it much myself. The valve system seems a bit elaborate to me, and I think my demo was therefore a bit half-hearted. Greg Natale's recommendation in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago fired me up, and I put some carrots in a FridgeSmart in my fridge to test it out.

Wednesday night I host my Book Club at my house. Julie arrives a bit early while I was making the snacks, spots the FridgeSmart in my fridge and asks about it. We test a carrot (nearly 3 weeks old) and it is fresh, not sweaty, and snaps rather than bends. Success!

As it happens Julie is hosting a party the next night at her home in west London. My hands-on experience of the FridgeSmart plus Julie's personal testimony and visual aids (some week-old flabby carrots from her own fridge) does the trick: never mind selling one, I sell eight!

A few weeks ago I met Collette, a charming young South African woman who is juggling Tupperware with a full-time job as a social worker. Collette is looking for some inspiration and asked if she could come to one of my parties. She lives very close to Julie, so comes along tonight. The deal is that Collette helps out by doing some of the demo, and she does her own recipe. I supervise the Quiche without Pastry, and Collete supervises Raspberry Dreams. By the way, I have now added these and all my party recipes to my website.

It's a long leisurely party, and Julie donates her £50 reward to St Christopher's Hospice, a charity which is close to her heart. She takes three half-price items for herself, so she still gets nearly £60 worth of Tupperware for £30.

I receive a sweet email from Dixie Longate, the drag queen Tupperware lady in California (see the video two posts ago), who tells me she is currently the No. 2 seller in the US, having shifted $30,000 worth of Tupperware last month! She is taking Dixie's Tupperware Party Off-Broadway this autumn, so I might try to arrange a trip to visit friends in New York at the same time.

In your face

2006-06-25T10:08:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, Tupperware HQ sent out some recipes for a Tupperware Spa party: face packs made in the Happy Chopper, and foot balm made in the Quick Shake. Seemed like a fun idea, and I added the info to my website. Tonight's hostess Laura plumped for a spa party, so I rocked up at the little flat above a shop in North London, and set out my stall.

Tonight is another fundraiser for The Food Chain. Laura is the Chief Executive of the charity, and in her other life she is a Lib Dem councillor. A dozen or so Lib Dems troop in, and we are off.

The face packs are easy and fun to make in the Happy Chopper, and everyone has a turn with it. But I am not sure that a rambunctious Tupperware party is a relaxing enough place to actually apply the masks. We have a go applying the apple, honey and sage mask to Laura's face with the Kings Sceptre, but I think in future I will leave the hostess her face packs to cool in the fridge and apply at her leisure after everyone has gone. For a treat, and to show off the MicroPlus Pitcher, I also melt some chocolate in the microwave and dip some English strawberries in it. We add these to Laura's buffet.

Guests ranged from Margot, a Tupperware fan who chipped in with some excellent selling points, to Pippa, who was was extremely sceptical about pretty much everything. But needless to say everyone including Pippa finds something they wanted in the catalogue. Laura donates her 15% reward to The Food Chain, which came to £60. To this I added another £18 which I raised by raffling to chance to buy items at half price, another reward donated by Laura.

Remember the bath mat I won last week for my sales? I have just noticed this morning that it has a Tupperware logo woven in!

Temple of Tupperware

2006-06-22T21:42:00.000+01:00

No parties for the last week or so. Lucy has to cancel her party, which is shame because she lives on a houseboat, and we were going to make cocktails on the deck. Maybe later in the summer.

I deliver a Tupperware order to Sandie, who used to be a Tupperware consultant herself. I catch a glimpse of her kitchen cupboard and ask if I can take a photo. I don't know whether I am impressed or terrified.

Later in the week I take a train out to Leamington Spa, home of Tupperware Central where Riitta has organised some training. As you walk in to the lobby of the very modest offices, there is an set of MiniMaxes in a glass case in front of a window. With the summer sunlight streaming through them like stained glass, I feel like I have entered the temple of Tupperware

Everyone is charming, although I hear my late mother's scolding voice in my head when a milk bottle is placed on the table at coffee time. It is quickly snatched away and replaced with a milk jug! I come home laden with gifts as well as ideas:

* a posh bath towel set for being a Top 10 seller during a promotion period last month
* some sandwich boxes (no longer in the catalogue) for having dated the most parties of all the consultants there. I decant some pork and leek sausages into one of them when I get home.
* a selection of FridgeSmart boxes from a raffle

On the subject of FridgeSmarts, Greg from Sydney is quoted in last week's Space supplement in The Guardian singing their praises. He says how trendy Tupperware is in Sydney these days. So I google and email him, telling him my mission is precisely that -- to make Tupperware cool and desirable to my urban customers. Turns out he is an interior designer who designed his own kitchen, so he knows his stuff, and he gives me some good tips and contacts.

Apparently Sydney has several drag queen Tupperware ladies, who juggle their stage work with selling the plastic, and sometimes combine the two. I am intrigued by Dixie Longate (say the name out loud...), a American drag performer who has an off-Broadway show this summer. Her show is a real Tupperware party, with Dixie telling her tragic white trash tale while she earns her margin. I found some videos of Dixie's parties on YouTube: here she is talking about how she got started:

At home with Miss Eleganzia Bowle

2006-06-13T21:30:00.000+01:00

I volunteer for The Food Chain, a London charity that supports the HIV community through good nutrition. Through their weekly newsletter I have offered to run fund-raising parties. At a charity party, instead of the host earning rewards in free Tupperware, their chosen charity gets the money. The host still gets their half-price allowance.

I have three charity parties coming up in the next few weeks, including a Tupperware Spa experience where I will be preparing face packs and foot scrubs. But my first charity host is Adam. His complexion is flawless already, so we have gone for a chocolate almond cake in his kitchen a short walk from Clapham Common.

It's another baking day, in every sense, but certainly not one for turning the oven on. So our microwave cake is very welcome. Adam's buffet is fantastic, and looks especially good decanted into some of the products I have brought. My Expressions pitcher is filled with Pimms. His colleagues, who all work in the area of IT support for arts organisations, take to the demo with gusto, and by the end I think I had demonstrated everything on the table. I am Tuppered out.

Sales give The Food Chain £22, which Adam's employer has agreed to match. The resulting £44 donation will pay for almost 30 delicious home cooked Sunday lunches delivered direct to service users homes. And Adam got a half-price baking sheet for himself.

After this party, I will never think of one Tupperware product in the same way again. Someone pointed out that "Eleganzia Bowl" sounds like a drag queen!

It's fete

2006-06-12T22:20:00.000+01:00

Something different today. My local residents association is hosting a summer fete as part of London's Garden Squares weekend, and I have been asked to run a Tupperware stall. Armed with a vinyl banner I bought online, a Tupperware branded polo shirt in a violent shade of turquoise, all the ingredients for salsa, and my body weight in tortilla chips, I set out my stall in Merrick Square between the bric a brac and the tombola. I have to say, my stall looks sensational. The vine tomatoes from my local Turkish shop sitting in a green Mini-Max bowl look amazingly good. Check out the photos, tasty or what?

My friend Susan joins me to help field enquiries and to fetch me Pimms and samosas when I get a craving. I run a free prize draw for a Fresh n Pure Ice Tray, and give out lots of catalogues. It's hard to tell, but at least 6 people seem really keen to host a demo, and I got most of their contact details on the prize draw tickets, so I will follow those up next week. Many people are intrigued to see me there, it's clear that they are pleased to see that Tupperware is back.

A beautiful afternoon in a London garden square, a funny and vicacious friend on hand to help me and gossip with, a soothing guitarist strumming away to my left, and friendly people who want Tupperware. It's not like work.

The World Tup

2006-06-12T21:52:00.000+01:00

Another scorcher in London, and off I go to Highbury to Lorna's World Cup Tupperware Party. I haul my trolley bag up the four stories to Lorna's top floor kitchen, and set everything out. As I expected, most of the guests do indeed want to watch England's first World Cup match which is scheduled to start at 2pm, the same start time as the party. Lorna and I have a chat and we decide to delay the demo until after the final whistle. One guest, Gill, is not amused by the football focus, and sits in the kitchen with a face as long as a gas man's mac. She is also in "difficult lady customer mode" for most of the afternoon, but the next day she follows it up with a very sweet message via my website apologising for her grumpiness.

We make the quiche without pastry in the Princess flexible silicone form, then reconvene in the living room. Towards the end of the cooking, I hear a gentle shriek from the kitchen, where Lorna had gone to check on the quiche. I wander in to find the oven door open and the Princess silicone form face down on the floor, quiche-side first. She had tried to lift the pan out of the oven on its own, without a baking tray, panicked when it flexed, and dropped it!

With staccato whispers we discreetly scoop and flip the quiche back into the tin and back into the oven. Lorna was mortified. I just remember Julia Child's words when she dropped a Thansgiving turkey and put it back on to the platter and served it "Remember, you are the only one in the kitchen". I suggest to Lorna that we display the quiche, but don't actually eat it. She decides that what her guests don't know won't hurt them. Until they read this.

Lorna chooses a Mini-Max as her free item, and for her half-price item, a flower silicone form. I bet she will always use a baking tray with it.

Bend it like Tupperware

2006-06-08T00:46:00.000+01:00

I am happy to report that I had the third highest retail sales of all consultants in the UK in May 2006.

I am less happy to report that I have accidentally scheduled a Tupperware party for the exact 90 minutes of the England vs. Paraguay game on Saturday. What was I thinking? I liaise with the hostess to check that she wants to go ahead, and she does, although she says that she and her guests would like to watch the football too, so we will have it on in the background. This will be interesting. Watch this space.

Working it

2006-06-06T18:46:00.000+01:00

A party at someone's home usually lasts two hours or so, with plenty of time for browsing the catalogue and ordering. Today is an experiment: how can I run a lunch-hour party in an office setting without it being rushed or cutting any corners. I am doing a lunch-hour demo at the university where I work part-time, with my colleagues as the guests. Some of them have been to one of my home parties, so they will have helpful feedback on how today compares.

The first useful thing (although it didn't feel that way when she told me) is that Laura, my manager, friend and hostess, almost forgot about the event, and she didn't do the required shopping until the last moment. I do always remind hosts a few days before, but with an office-based party I think I will do it the day before. It makes sense: if you are in the commuting routine, it is easy to forget you have to take groceries to work one day.

I heave the microwave from the communal kitchen into the biggest shared office, and assign one desk for food preparation and another as my shop window. I drop most of my normal intro about the history and background of Tupperware. Instead, after the briefest of introductions, I cut straight to the cooking demo. As we go through the demo I just chuck in the occasional bit of info about Tupperware's significance in history, economics, gender, design, science and sociology! Hey, you really learn something at my demos, you know.

The microwaved chocolate almond cake is becoming a bit of a regular, but that's because it works, it is quick, it wows the crowds as it pops out of the silicone form, and it tastes good. And who doesn't love an unexpected slice of chocolate cake placed on their office desk when it's not even anyone's birthday.

As we cook, and I tell guests about the products we are using, I field questions about some of the other products on the display and pass them around. I also ask the crowd for their own Tupperware anecdotes. It seems to work, and because I know all the guests, I don't mind taking some chances in this trial run.

We started 10 minutes late while everyone fetched their lunch and found a seat, but we still finish with a few minutes to go before the end of the lunch hour. I work here, so I leave the display up until the end of the day. There is time for people to take a catalogue away with them, even take it home, and give me their order tomorrow. For other office parties, I won't have this luxury, so I now need to figure out how to include enough time for people to order, without pressurising them. I certainly need a good half-hour to pack my bag too, so perhaps I will have to assign a full two hours to an office party after all. We'll see.

A big weekend is coming up. Two home parties, one of which is my first charity party in aid of The Food Chain, and a stall at the residents' association summer fete in Merrick Square.

Out in the sun

2006-06-04T17:27:00.000+01:00

It's a glorious day in South East London and I am glad I don't need to go very far for today's party. A few weeks ago I got chatting with Canadian ex-pat Jason on the gay community website OUTeverywhere, and I was delighted that he was keen to host a Tupperware party for half a dozen friends. He would have a new bathroom to christen, and his kitchen needed replenishing. I was even more delighted that he lives just 10 minutes down the road.

In the end, Jason's builders took slightly longer than planned (isn't that unusual...) and we had a last-minute change of venue to his friends' place round the corner. Ed and Blake hail from the southern US (of course they do, they are called Ed and Blake) and are stalwarts of their mothers' Tupperware parties back home. Their lovely open plan kitchen-diner with its sunny terrace is the perfect setting for a very gay summertime Tupperware party with built-in cigarette breaks. Their dining table becomes my shop window, and the central island food prep area gives our demonstration the look and feel of a TV cooking show. Although it was definitely more Fanny Cradock than Jamie Oliver.

Jason was having fun with his retro buffet, complete with a cheese-and-pineapple hedgehog and some curried tinned pears which are his mother's speciality. They are astonishingly good. He fills my green Expressions Tip Top pitcher with pina colada, and one guest David takes the theme to its limit by bringing bottles of Black Tower, Blue Nun and Mateus Rose. All the guests muck in to make a chocolate almond cake in the microwave. Grown men, and strapping ones at that, coo and purr at the precision of the silicone spatula. I had promised Jason I would complete the picture with an authentic 1970s Tupperware cake server that I had picked up on eBay, and it is a big hit.

But it isn't just a campy nostalgia fest. Jason, Ed, Blake and guests have fun with their memories of Tupperware, but they also really engage with the fantastic new products. Blake pounces on the Expressions Round Server with its carrying handle: he is a big pie-maker but complains that he can never take his pies anywhere. The Pina Colada must have hit the spot too because almost everyone bought an Expressions pitcher for their own home cocktails. Most peoples' orders stretched over two separate order forms and when I calculate their rewards, my joint hosts come out with over £100 worth of free Tupperware.

I leave with the sun still blazing and the Tuppered-out guests lazing shirts-off on the terrace. Giddy with the sun, I accidentally leave my tablecloth behind. I will collect it from Jason when I drop the orders next week. Although looking at the order forms in front of me now, I may need to hire a truck.

Great expectations

2006-05-28T19:37:00.000+01:00

I take the bus to Cambridge, my Tupperware trolley-bag stashed in the luggage compartment, for my first out-of-town party hosted by my friends Munizha and Hank, who are expecting their first baby this summer. That's Munizha in the photo, helping me demonstrate a Mini Max. Last week I added a few new things to my demonstration kit, including the 26cm diameter Princess silicone cake pan, which we will use today to prepare a broccoli and stilton quiche without pastry. Munizha and I did the Atkins diet together a few years ago in preparation for a holiday in Mexico, so the crustless quiche is a bit of an in-joke.

I have to say, as excellent as all Tupperware products are, some of the names that the folks at Tupperware have chosen are very silly. I do send up some of the product names: the Princess and Queen cake dishes for one, and the King's Sceptre pastry brush. The "Bake 2 Basics" range always seems to include one pun too many, and as for the "That's a Bowl" bowl...

Anyway, there is an interesting and diverse crowd today including two pregnant women, their husbands, a visitor from Israel, and Munizha's mother-in-law Betty who went to her first Tupperware party in the 1950s. I manage to shoehorn into my demo some product advantages for the Muslim and Jewish guests: we are not cooking either Kosher or Halal, but the aforementioned King's Sceptre pastry brush does have bristles made of silicone rather than pig's hair! We all squeeze into the tiny galley kitchen and guests take turns sifting flour, grating cheese, Quick Shaking eggs and milk, and stirring the mixture. The stilton is vetoed at the last minute by the pregnant guests in favour of mature Cheddar, but the quiche is delicious all the same. Needless to say, the Princess delivers up her quiche as well as the Flower gives up her cakes. Not a crumb is left behind. Actually there was no crust, so that's not so surprising. But nothing stuck.

Usually I work with hosts to make sure they make the most of their hosting rewards, and sometimes help them juggle the free and half-price items in order to get the best deal. Munizha is a dear friend, and I have a lot of patience, but mercy me, she was indecisive about her order. We got there in the end, but I am glad that she and Hank have already settled on a name for their daughter! Baby Rubi arrives in August. Munizha's eventual reward for hosting was £56 worth of Tupperware for £22. Not bad.

I have agreed to run an all-day Tupperware Party at my local fete on Sunday 11 June. Do come along if you are in the London SE1 area. But before that, I have my first all-gay party for Jason and his friends next weekend.

Top Tupp

2006-05-24T21:18:00.000+01:00

I was buying some tortilla chips at the Mexican shop down my street this afternoon when I had call from Jane Green, Managing Director of Tupperware UK. Apparently, and amazingly, I was the UK's number one Tupperware consultant last week, with the highest retail sales in the whole country! I am astonished and delighted, and I hope there isn't a recount. It is fantastic to achieve this after just a few weeks as a consultant, and I owe thanks to my hostesses Jacqui, Julie and Sandie, and all their friends who came to the parties.

I hope this won't make me the Orson Welles of Tupperware, never quite living up to his early promise...

Arty party

2006-05-20T07:53:00.000+01:00

Julie has invited me to be part of her birthday party at her home in North London. And talk about a contrast with my last arrival. This time I arrived a good 45 minutes early, so I have time to discuss with Julie how to incorporate the demo into the evening. We will be cooking the Lemon Drizzle Cake in a conventional oven. I piloted the cake earlier this week at Jacqui's party. Best of all, arriving early gives me the chance to collaborate with Julie on her buffet table, inserting some key pieces of Tupperware. This is really effective, and I think it is almost as important a showcase as the cooking demo itself. I have added to the buffet table my own CheeseSmart and Expressions pitcher, and from the kit four small Expressions bowls and an Eleganzia bowl.

The items I am not using tonight, I arrange like a shop window display: draped with a mauve tablecloth, you would never know that my display table has a dayjob as Julie's ironing board. I still have the very basic Tupperware kit, plus one or two extras from my own kitchen, so I still bring everything.

I am trying to make every party an event, so I have made some laminated enlargement of 1950s and 1960s Tupperware graphics, from a US consultant's display book. Julie tapes one of them to her front door to amuse guests as they arrive. It's quite a creative crowd, many of them work in the arts or in art and design education, so I talk a lot about the importance of Tupperware's aesthetics and design, from its appearance in New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1956 to the current Translations in Tupperware design contest.

Putting the CheeseSmart on the buffet table was definitely a Smart, not Cheesy, idea. It's my own CheeseSmart, which caught my eye at my own party before I became a consultant. Mostly I liked its look -- I rarely eat cheese! The guests seemed to share my enthusiasm: I sold three.

The cooking went well, but I am fairly sure that Julie's self-raising flour was actually plain. The baking powder helped, and the crunchy lemon topping was fantastic, but it was a bit flat. Like a lot of Londoners, Julie has a kitchen diner which is spacious for a single person, but a bit of a squeeze for ten guests and a Tupperware Man. I climbed up onto an Ikea stool in the corner, and supervised from there. With my floor-length camouflage apron and wielding a silicone spatula, I looked like a very domestic Ninja assassin.

With her rewards in free and half-price Tupperware, Julie came out with £65 worth of Tupperware for about £15. One guest, Helen, works as an administrator for the Product Design course at one of the big design colleges, so if I can't persuade those guys to have a Tupperware party, I will eat my apron.

Next stop Cambridge, where my friends Munizha and Hank have asked me to run a Saturday afternoon event next weekend. I wasn't planning on ever hauling my trolleybag long-distance. but on reflection I am happy to go where the Tupperware takes me.

Baptism of Fire

2006-05-17T12:00:00.000+01:00

So I had my first party where I didn't know any of the guests. Twenty (20!) regulars from the excellent London SE1 community website were gathering in hostess Jacqui’s basement kitchen diner in Bermondsey for my first proper party. So far, so nerve-wracking. Then a couple of hours before the party, I had a call from the Managing Director of Tupperware UK to tell me that one of the world’s top Tupperware distributors was in London, and could she come to my party? I gulped. Then I thought about dragging that big black Tupperware trolley bag on and off the 21 bus. I agreed the distributor could come -- if she could pick me up and drive me to the party.

My guest Riita is a charming and charismatic woman from Finland, very senior in Tupperware. She gave me a pep-talk on the drive over to Jacqui’s. Unfortunately, the 7pm traffic was terrible, and Riita had never driven in Central London, and her sat nav thought we were going to a street with the same name in some far-flung part of London. I was wild-eyed and a bit shrill with stage fright, and before I even noticed we were flying across London Bridge in the wrong direction. We got there, but we were half an hour late. And Riita got busted for the Congestion Charge. And, as if my stress levels were not high enough, hostess Jacqui turned out to be a food writer and food stylist. But at least she didn’t tell me that until the end, which was sweet of her.

It was a rambunctious and fun party. Jacqui had prepared some ravishing food, but I got through the evening on adrenalin, water and one chocolate- coated cherry. At this rate I will definitely lose this pesky extra stone before my trip to Mauritius in July.

Jacqui had asked for a conventional cooking demo, so I adapted a lemon drizzle cake recipe for the Silicone Flower Form. The splash-guard on the big Bake 2 Basics bowl was handy, with Jacqui’s two young sons cracking eggs and taking turns with the electric mixer. The Citrus Wonder also slots into the splash guard for stabilized zesting straight into the mixture, so less washing up for me to do.

I knew from my last party that the silicone cake “tin” worked like a dream in the microwave, and I am glad to report there were also oohs of wonder when after 45 minutes in the conventional oven, the cake flopped out perfectly again. We drizzled it with a lemon juice and sugar mix which we allowed to ooze through the cake and form a crunchy topping.

Sales were buoyant, the guests were fun and interesting, and for hosting, Jacqui came out with rewards of £65 to spend on Tupperware, and three items of her choice at half-price.

I walked home, trolley bag in tow. 15 minutes.

Next is Julie’s birthday party on Thursday. Three of the guests were at my first try-out party, so for variety I will be putting aside my normal plain black bistro apron, and piloting my new camouflage patterned one (left).

Tupperware Party Animal

2006-05-08T03:30:00.000+01:00

It's done. I have just emailed my first party order to Tupperware HQ in Leighton Buzzard. I am officially a Tupperware Man.

My dear friend Laura agreed to host my debut Tupperware party on Friday night at her home in Walthamstow. Three other guests came along, and two more sent their apologies and orders. This first party was longer and more leisurely than they will normally be -- all the guests were good friends of mine, so there was a lot of chat. They also gave me some feedback which will be really helpful for future parties: I have six lined up over the next month or so, with some very different groups of people.

I talked them through the latest products and the Tupperware story, and for the cooking demo I supervised the guests preparing a microwave Chocolate Almond Cake. Laura's normal oven has broken down, so she was keen to experiment with the microwave. We used the flexible Silicone Flower Form, which seems like it is made of rubber and which you don't grease at all. Everyone (including me) was intrigued by how it would work. I suppose I took a bit of a chance by not having a trial run with the recipe, but I used a Tupperware recommended recipe, and I also decided that if the products are as good as they appear, nothing could go wrong anyway. And of course, it all went right. You can see from these photo that despite Laura's initial concern, the cake popped out a treat, leaving barely a mark on the silicone.

Of the three guests, Julie was by her own admission the least interested in buying Tupperware. She is a ceramics and natural materials kind of a girl. But her enthusiasm for the large Silicone Spatula during the cooking demo was infectious, and after taking their turn mixing the cake batter, and seeing Julie's deft cracking of the eggs with its long, hard handle, all three guests bought one!

Laura's hostess reward was £34.50 to spend on Tupperware, and two half-price items.

And of all people, it was Julie who rang me on Saturday morning to book her own party in two weeks' time. She has been looking for a way to celebrate her birthday at home, and having had fun at my demo on Friday, she has decided to host her own Tupperware party. This calls for another cake recipe I think.