“Pedanticism – pedantry, actually!”

Town Crier with

Justin Tunstall

Retail consultant, shares with us his cheese selling experience

• “Sticky fingers”
• “Everyone’s a winner”
• “Myths and legends of Turophilia”
• “When ‘cheese’ is not cheese”
• “Don’t disrespect the Cheddar”

What does one do when a customer is just plain wrong? During the August melee I had somebody in the shop who was adamant that he didn’t want Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire, but her Cheddar

I’d never heard of it and a quick look in the Directory of British Cheese didn’t list such a cheese, nor did the catalogues of the various wholesalers whom we use. A web search didn’t bring up a positive result, either. Rather than tell him that the cheese doesn’t exist, I said that I couldn’t find it through my usual channels, but that I’d love to taste it sometime. Sadly, he wasn’t interested in tasting (or buying) any of the fine West Country Cheddars for which our area, and dare I say it our shop, are famed. He may believe us to be a sub-standard shop for not stocking his favourite, but his next port of call might have been the Aquarium, perhaps to look for a mermaid.

As a youth, working in record shops (if you’re under 25, ask your parents what those were), I soon learned to rein in my elitist disdain for some customers’ purchases – as was swiftly pointed out to me by the store manager, the profit from the heavy metal albums at which I had turned up my nose had covered my wages for the day. Thankfully, I don’t have such issues any more: if someone has come to the shop to talk cheese, they’re okay in my book. Besides which, we don’t stock cheeses that I don’t like!

Nonetheless, my inner pedant still needs watching. Minor mispronunciations abound – and not just for foreign cheeses such as Comté, Brie de Meaux (oft called Moo!) and Brebirousse d’Argental, a tongue-twister for almost any Brit. More than a few people ask for Dorset Blue Vine-y (it’s spelled Vinny – and pronounced like the first name of the footballer/actor Vinnie Jones). We have a rule in the shop – don’t correct shoppers when they’ve got it wrong, but don’t repeat an incorrect rendition of the name. There’s usually two or three opportunities to say it correctly: as the cheese is cut, when it’s put in the basket and when it’s rung up at the till. They may pick up on that, or they may not. I’m quite happy to sell Vine-y to paying customers all day long. Similarly with Quicke’s Cheddar, a big seller for us where the silent ‘e’ on the end of Mary’s surname often gets pronounced.

I understand that the Dorset-made Woolsery goat cheese was first made in the village of Woolfardisworthy in Devon. The shorter name is how the locals pronounced it. I’d love someone to come into the shop and ask for Woolfardisworthy! People misread labels, too – I’ve been asked whether the washed-rind Burwood Bole, from James’ Cheese, is as blue as Stilton by folk who’ve speed-read the name.

But we don’t always get it right ourselves – Gorwydd Caerphilly, once from Llanddewi Brefi but now made in Somerset, is one that I still struggle with; just last week I asked a Welsh visitor to take me through the name just once more. Hopefully I’ll get it right one day.