UNKNOCKABLE PRESAMPLE

My cousin gave me a packet of marmalade-on-toast flavour, chocolate, digestive biscuits.

They're unimaginably delicious. I don't know why the boffins in the biscuit factory thought it up; I've absolutely no idea how they make it happen, but the result is a spectacular combination of orange, chocolate, biscuit and toast crumbs. It's delightful.

Not everyone I tell agrees. But with a cup of hot chocolate and a couple of dunks, it's like a toasty melt-in-the-mouth breakfast.

"Don't knock it until you've tried it," I heard myself saying.

Is that really a good idea though? After all, last week, my friend Luke was exhorting the values of eating yoghurt with Marmite. Does that fall into the unknockable presamples? Is it reasonable to predict that that will be just horrible? Or should I believe my friend's insistence and give it a go?

Then there are safe choices that sound delicious, and in fact you know will go together without the need for an experiment: strawberries and caramel, elderflower cordial in a glass of apple juice. You might not have ever tried it, but you can sort of already see how a safe choice might work.

It's the grey area between the safe choices and the horrible ones that's interesting isn't it? Who'd have believed bacon goes with syrup? Or pineapples with tabasco? Or mangoes with a nice brie? I once poured orange juice on my cornflakes because I saw it in an advert, and I was nearly sick trying to eat them.

Anyway, marmalade-on-toast flavour biscuits are actually pretty nice, even if for you they fall into that grey group of recoilable foods you don't feel the need to try. I suppose you'll either believe me or you won't, which really, puts me in the same category as Luke with his Marmitey-yoghurt suggestion.

Will I try it? Will I mix up a little full fat Greek yoghurt with a teaspoon of the yeast extract? Will the tangy Marmite balance out of the smooth, inoffensive swirls of yoghurt?

"You like Marmite?" he said. I nodded.

"And you like yoghurt?" Yes. Though I also like lasagna and roller coasters. I'm not sure that argument always holds up.

I suppose the difference is that nobody out there has produced a Marmite-Yoghurt-Corner, whereas they have made (hopefully with significant investment) marmalade-on-toast flavour chocolate digestives - so somebody must have done the research into whether it works as an unknockable presample. They've concluded so. And that's good enough for me.