To call something 'a bit Marmite' is now official: the OED lists Marmite as an adjective for anything that splits people into love-it and hate-it camps, and it dates the metaphor to 1994, two years before the famous advert everyone credits.
Marmite Articles
Explore our collection of articles about Marmite, Britain's most divisive spread.
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A Marlborough boutique has painted itself in Marmite stripes
Isabella Wookey, who runs Willow & Wolf on the high street in Marlborough, Wiltshire, has painted the front of her shop in broad stripes. The stripes are a slightly pinker brown than the proper Marmite yellow-and-oxblood, but the reference is instant. Walk past it and you think, jar.
A man called Saire Marmite, by his own request
Saire May, then thirty-eight, got out his deed poll forms and officially became Saire Marmite. His reasoning, as reported at the time, was that he wanted to demonstrate proper devotion to the jar.
1984: the year Marmite changed the lid and the nation panicked
For most of its history, Marmite came with a metal screw-top lid. The lid was satisfying. It made the right sound when you opened the jar. It had heft. It felt durable, in the way that midcentury British packaging often did, and it suggested that the contents were a serious product.
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