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Grocer, May 16, 2009 by Alex Beckett

The Grocer doesn't know what Alistair Darling eats for breakfast, but the chances are he would empty his larder to make space for the most ironic food launch of the week.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, at long last someone has created Credit Crunch. Not a twisted mutation of Robert Peston and Captain Crunch, but an oat-based breakfast cereal shaped in global currency symbols.

Its creator, former Big Brother producer Sheridan Simove, was amazed nobody else had come up with the idea and expects it to be a hit with the British sense of humour: the first shipment of 1,000 boxes is currently

chugging to Blighty on a cargo ship in the South China seas, and one of the big four retailers has already expressed an interest.

Yet while Credit Crunch is in the best traditions of British entrepreneurial opportunism, expensive British manufacturing costs forced Simove to have the cereal manufactured in a factory in Guandong, China--not helped by the "bloody headache" involved in moulding the currency symbols, says Simove.

Still, at least the Chancellor could put a pack on expenses.