We treat 'love it or hate it' as if the 1996 advert invented it. The OED traces Marmite to a 1985 post on a Usenet cooking group explaining the jar to Americans: people fall into two groups, those who love it and those who would not stay in the same room as it. The divide, online, eleven years early.
Marmite Articles
Explore our collection of articles about Marmite, Britain's most divisive spread.
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The first Marmite man was Rab C Nesbitt
The OED dates the adjective 'Marmite' to a single 1994 citation. Look at what it actually is and you find a Sandwell Evening Mail review calling Gregor Fisher's Rab C Nesbitt 'the Marmite man of comedy.' By the dictionary's own reckoning, the first Marmite man wore a string vest.
A bit Marmite: the jar that became an adjective
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.
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