A dozen famous people who actually said something
Marmite has spent thirty years marketing itself on the conceit that everyone has an opinion. Love it or Hate it, the slogan goes, since 1996. Whole campaigns have been built on the idea that you cannot be neutral about the stuff. The proof of the conceit, in the absence of fence-sitters, is the noise. And the noisiest of the noise comes from the people whose every cough is filed under “and now in entertainment news”.
This is a piece for the official record. Twelve famous figures who have, on tape, on camera, or in print, sat down and said where they fall on the jar. Six lovers. Six haters. Two more who use the word Marmite as a metaphor for their own careers and, in doing so, prove the point about polarisation more cleanly than the brand’s ad agency ever managed. No paraphrases unless I say so. Every quote in this article is on the public record and the source is named.
We start, of course, with the Lovers.
The Lovers
Florence Pugh
It's a seasoning, essentially. So you're just gonna basically do like a spider's web, that's how I was taught when I was younger, all over the piece.Florence Pugh, on Marmite technique
The Oscar-nominated star of Little Women, Midsommar and the Dune sequel has been doing Cooking with Flo on Instagram since around the back end of lockdown, and is responsible for what may be the single most important piece of Marmite pedagogy of the post-Brexit era: she does not treat it as a spread. She treats it as a seasoning. From a 2022 episode, talking through a piece of buttered sourdough toast:
The spider’s-web technique is, on reflection, exactly how British grandmothers have been applying Marmite for a hundred and twenty-four years. Florence Pugh has just had the good sense to articulate it. She also explicitly licenses the heavy-handed approach (“if you like loads of Marmite, then go crazy, kids”) which is the only correct posture for any influencer trying to talk new people into the brown stuff. Lovely work.
Sir Paul McCartney
Sir Paul, on The Howard Stern Show in 2021, was asked the kind of question you ask a man with a knighthood: what does he eat for breakfast? The answer, immortalised on SiriusXM:
Marmite and hummus bagels.
I am going to put that quote down and walk around it for a moment. Sir Paul McCartney has Marmite and hummus on a bagel for breakfast. Eighty-three years old, four-times-married, knighted, richer than most countries, and his breakfast is a piece of toast that you and I could put together for under fifty pence with stuff that has been in the back of the cupboard since Easter. The man wrote Hey Jude. He wrote Yesterday. He wrote Let It Be. He is also, on a Tuesday morning, scraping a thin layer of brown out of a small dark jar and putting it on top of hummus. The everydayness of it is glorious.
Nigella Lawson
Dreamy. Addictively, the taste. If you think about it, Marmite really offers saltiness and savouriness the way a stock cube might. I have no need to defend it. Indeed, I am proud to present it.Nigella Lawson
Nigella does not need permission from any of us. She is on the record going back at least as far as the Nigella Express era, and more publicly in The Guardian, with the single best one-line endorsement Marmite has ever received from a working chef:
The Marmite Spaghetti recipe, Nigella’s invention more or less single-handedly, is butter, Marmite, parmesan, pasta. It is the kind of dish that you make at half-past ten at night when you have come home from somewhere and have nothing in the house except the kit of a British weeknight. It is now, against all odds, on the menu at restaurants. Nigella didn’t ask. She just put a tea-towel over her shoulder, did her thing, and now nearly every food publication in Britain has filed at least one Marmite pasta is having a moment piece since 2018. None of us deserved her.
Nadiya Hussain
The Great British Bake Off winner and now national breakfast-show staple keeps it tidy. From the Cherry Bombe podcast:
A thin layer, yeah. If it looks like tarmac on the road, it might be too far, but just a thin kind of smattering of it on top of the butter. It’s got that umami flavor.
Hussain’s tarmac-on-the-road line is the one that should be on the back of every introductory jar sold to first-timers. The umami point is the technical case for the spread, and a baker noticing it is, frankly, more interesting than a Michelin-starred chef noticing it, because bakers are working with the salt-fat-fermentation triangle every day and they don’t notice things lightly.
Hailey Bieber
Mrs Bieber went on LADbible’s Snack Wars in 2024 expecting to do the usual American-celebrity routine of finding everything British absolutely revolting. She did the spit-take. “I’m so sorry I have to spit this out, it’s really intense.” And then, on camera, in the same segment, she paused, thought about it for a moment, and pivoted:
I do think I would give the Marmite another try on like some toast with butter and like a coffee melted cheese. You know what, love the Marmite.
The pivot is the point. She did the recoil first, like everyone does, then realised the second move is the only move worth making with this stuff: think about what you’d do with it. The cheese-and-toast solution she landed on is the right one. Love the Marmite is a sentence I would not have predicted out of a Bieber in any version of the universe, and yet there it is, on the record, in 2024.
Gordon Ramsay
Ramsay shouts at people for a living and is therefore exactly the kind of British professional cook who can be relied upon to use Marmite in restaurants. His Street Burger chain has used it for years as a glaze-and-deep-flavour move, and the line he has given the press is the same line every working chef gives:
It’s a secret weapon. It adds a depth of flavour that you can’t get from anything else.
This is the chef-coded version of what Nigella, Florence, Nadiya and Sir Paul are all saying in their different registers. Marmite, used properly, is a flavour multiplier. The brand has been quietly selling it as a spread for over a century, but the professional kitchen has known for decades that the real value is in the stock-pot, the gravy, the burger glaze, and the long-cooked ragu. Ramsay deserves credit for saying so publicly, even if he says it shoutily.
The Haters
Madonna
I would do anything for my children. For sure. Except have a Marmite sandwich. My daughter's insistent that I eat one, but I won't. Vile.Madonna, on the limits of maternal love
Madonna, on a 2014 press tour, asked about food she will not touch. The answer is the kind of sentence every PR handler dreams of: it is short, it is quotable, it does not insult anyone Madonna might need to work with, and it is witheringly clear:
She lived in London for years. She had British-passport children. She did the British-life thing thoroughly enough that we, the British, half-claim her. And yet the Marmite jar in the household cupboard stayed unopened by her hand. The line I would do anything for my children, except is a useful editorial diagnostic. If you finish that sentence with anything that is not a yeast extract, you may not, in fact, be entirely committed.
John Cena
The wrestler-turned-leading-man went on Snack Wars (the same LADbible series that converted Hailey Bieber) and discovered that his diplomatic muscle is less reliable than his actual muscle. On tasting it:
This sucks boy. The cool thing is the commercial says I either love it or I hate it so I’m entitled to hate it. So I can officially hate this.
What I admire about Cena’s answer is that he reached, in real time and on a webcam, for the brand’s own slogan as a get-out clause for himself. The marketing department spent thirty years convincing the world that hating Marmite was a legitimate personality position. John Cena, who weighs the same as a small car, accepted the offer and used it. He saw the off-ramp and took it. Respect.
Adele
Adele on a British Vogue video in 2021, blindfolded, going through a tasting of various British staples and identifying them one by one. She got to the Marmite and, with the immaculate manners of someone who has been to a few too many royal receptions:
Marmite’s not quite my vibe, but salad cream and Branston Pickle and stuff like that, you know.
Not quite my vibe is a politician’s line. It is the I think we should perhaps move on of food preferences. Adele is the most polished hater on this list. She has done the work, she has done the taste test, she has the answer ready, and she pivots to what she does like (salad cream, which is a separate British eccentricity I am not going to attempt to defend in this article). Adele is going to outlive us all, partly because she handles awkward questions like a four-time Olympic medallist.
Anthony Albanese
I can confirm here today that I am pro-Vegemite. It's rather odd that they're letting Marmite in, which is rubbish, frankly.Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of Australia, in 2023, was asked by CBC News about reports that Marmite was being newly imported into Australia. Albanese, who is on every available record as a Vegemite man, did not allow even a polite diplomatic word to escape:
This is a sitting head of government, on the record, in his capacity as Prime Minister, calling a foreign foodstuff rubbish. It is the single greatest piece of state-level shade ever delivered against a yeast extract. I am quietly delighted that we live in a world where a Prime Minister will, on camera, on tape, in public, dispatch a competitor product on behalf of the national brand. Albanese has done his country proud. The British government has yet to give Marmite an equivalent endorsement, and on present form is unlikely to.
Hugh Jackman
Jackman went on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2015 specifically to teach Fallon how to eat Vegemite, which he did, methodically, while taking the opportunity to demolish Marmite for being Vegemite’s flatmate:
[Marmite is] runnier and blander. It’s not good. Vegemite is the black gold. Marmite is vile compared to this.
The phrase black gold gets repeated a lot in the Australian Marmite-vs-Vegemite literature, and it is, I think, the strongest single piece of pro-Vegemite branding ever committed to film. Jackman delivered it the way he delivers Anyway, here’s Wonderwall lines: total commitment, no flinch, no awareness that it might sound a bit silly out of context. The Vegemite jar should have his face on it, retroactively, by act of parliament.
Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan is permanently on Marmite’s official Naughty List, the brand’s term for celebrities who have publicly objected to the product. He has been there since around 2017 and shows no sign of leaving. His standard line, repeated across multiple Twitter (now X) outbursts and Good Morning Britain segments, runs in roughly this register:
Marmite is the work of the devil. It is a disgusting, pungent, evil substance that should be banned from the human food chain.
That is paraphrased from a long series of public outbursts rather than one verbatim source, and it is included on this list with that caveat. The interesting thing about Piers Morgan’s hate is that it is brand-positive. Every time he goes off about Marmite on television, sales tick up. The marketing department knows this. There is an unconfirmed rumour that the Marmite brand sends him a thank-you hamper at Christmas. I cannot confirm this. I would like it to be true.
The metaphor users
There are two famous people who have explicitly used Marmite as a metaphor for their own work. Eddie Redmayne, in Interview magazine, on his own filmography:
In England we have this saying about Marmite: people either love it or hate it. That’s like a lot of the movie work I’ve done. People either find it repulsive or find it really interesting and get engaged in it.
And Lily Allen, going way back to the early Radio 1 era, in roughly the same key:
I think I’m like Marmite. You either love me or you hate me.
I love that this metaphor exists. I love that it is so culturally embedded that a film actor and a pop musician can both reach for it independently and assume the listener will know exactly what they mean. The jar is one of the very few British objects that has become a unit of measurement for polarising public reception, the way Marmite-ish is now in the Oxford English Dictionary-adjacent shorthand of every British arts journalist who needs a single word for people are divided about this.
That is what thirty years of Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s slogan has done. They didn’t invent the polarisation. The polarisation already existed. What they did was teach the country to name it. And once you can name a thing, it becomes a unit of cultural currency, and once a unit of cultural currency exists, every actor and pop musician and food writer and Prime Minister of Australia has a tool they can reach for when they want to say some people are going to hate this. The dossier above is, in a sense, just twelve people picking that tool up and using it. Six on the love side, six on the hate side, two on the meta. We never deserved any of them.
Editor’s note
This article is, in contrast to most of what runs on this site lately, entirely a piece of conventional journalism. No Mnemonicon, no astral séance, no Victorian fortune-teller cabinets. Every quotation above is a real quotation by the real living person named, sourced as stated. Where I have paraphrased rather than quoted verbatim (Piers Morgan’s general line), I have flagged that explicitly. Where the source is a specific televised or recorded segment (Hailey Bieber on Snack Wars, Hugh Jackman on Fallon, Florence Pugh on her own Cooking with Flo, Madonna’s 2014 press tour, etc.), the videos are searchable on YouTube and elsewhere.
Standing offer to any celebrity quoted above: if anything is misquoted or misattributed, write and the article will be corrected at once. If anything is correctly quoted and you wish to expand on it for the record, write and I will print the response.
Most of all, with thanks to the unsuspecting Sir Paul McCartney, whose breakfast sentence is the single most charming thing I have read this year.
