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Radio interviews, television appearances and a few detours from the site's early days,
when supersized snacks found their way from kitchen tables onto the airwaves.
14 Apr 2006
Live transcript
Ready to follow playback
00:00
Also, we're going to be, we're going to make the biggest Creme Egg in the world ever.
00:06
Someone sent me earlier on the week, a website, which is called PimpMySnack.com.
00:10
Went and had a look at it. And basically, you know, we were talking about Monster Munch and how they're just teeny tiny now.
00:14
And they used to be absolutely massive. And then everyone started saying, yeah, wagon wheels used to be big as well. And so did, I don't know, Creme Eggs.
00:20
People were saying that. There's a guy who's got a site together.
00:23
And he's got people to actually make gigantic wagon wheels.
00:26
And there's like a step by step instruction of how to do it, photographs and everything.
00:29
So we had a look at that. And we thought, right, we're going to take him up on this challenge.
00:32
And today we are going to pimp a Cadbury's Creme Egg.
00:35
That's what we're going to do. I've got about 100 Creme Eggs here.
00:36
And during the course of the show, we're going to do just that.
00:39
Maybe you want to join in. I don't know.
00:40
Big Cadbury's Creme Egg.
00:42
Oh, it's going to be lush.
00:44
If it all goes according to plan, 8,000 calories in one sitting is what we're going to consume today.
00:49
Right, if you need another bit of distraction, if you need some chocolate in your life, it's all about Easter eggs, obviously.
00:55
Well, not entirely all about Easter eggs this Easter, but you know.
00:58
We have heard about this site.
01:00
Someone sent this through to us.
01:02
A site called PimpMySnack.com.
01:04
And this kind of tied in with something we did last week when we were talking about Monster Munchies and saying that sweets and snacks and all that kind of stuff used to be absolutely massive when you were a kid.
01:13
And now, you know, they've just reduced the sizing.
01:16
It's ridiculous. In particular, wagon wheels, they're tiny now.
01:19
And they used to be like the size of proper wagon wheels.
01:23
And Cadbury's Creme Eggs, they've definitely shrunk.
01:25
Absolutely, definitely shrunk. It's got nothing to do with getting older and getting bigger or anything like that at all. There's now a site called PimpMySnack.com.
01:32
It's been set up by a guy who got in touch with us earlier on this morning. And I'll give him his credit in just a bit.
01:40
His sister got in touch with us as well, Vanessa.
01:42
So if you go and have a look at that, PimpMySnack.com, there are loads and loads of things on there that they are giving step-by-step instruction how to make them bigger, how to
01:49
pimp them up. So wagon wheels, a jammy wagon wheel.
01:52
There are pictures there. You can follow the pictures and it will tell you how to pimp up a wagon wheel. Also, the KitKat Chunky Peanut Butter.
01:57
You can make a giant one of those. Jaffa Cakes, they're calling it Jaffazilla.
02:01
So people are just getting on board and they're creating these monster snacks.
02:06
And it's really well worth checking out.
02:07
So what we thought we'd do is do our own Creme Egg today.
02:10
So we have got ourselves a hollow egg, which I'm going to open up.
02:12
We've got a box over here. If you check it out on the webcam, I can hardly lift the box that's got the Creme Eggs in. We've got about 75, I think, Creme Eggs here.
02:22
The way that you do this is by getting your large egg, obviously, and you want to separate that into two halves. It's better if you get one that's already done.
02:28
So we'll do that. And then you get the individual Creme Eggs and get your spoon and you literally cut it open with your knife and then scoop out with your spoon the inside of
02:37
the Creme Egg. And then you dollop it into the hollow big half egg, obviously.
02:41
We're going to do that during the course of the show this morning.
02:43
You might have been out and got yourselves the right utensils and the right Creme Eggs and stuff like that. So you can join in as well.
02:47
Send us through your pictures if you like as you do it.
02:49
We're going to start now and we'll show you the results.
02:51
We'll let you know how we get on. I better play a record because I've been talking for ages and ages. But we're going to get on doing our Creme Eggs.
02:56
There's an awful lot of unwrapping to do here.
02:58
So Stewie and Sam, are you all right to join in with this?
03:00
Yeah, OK, fine. Listen to how willing they are.
03:02
That was me saying, right, what you have to do is buy those eggs that are in two halves already, and we went out and bought one that was completely sealed, and we've just been
03:08
trying to cut it in half, and it had a hairline fracture, and it was going in the wrong direction, but I can see in front of me now that we've managed to get a great big egg,
03:15
and we've halved it, and we're now going to go through the process of scooping out the inside of all the Creme Eggs. Like I said, we've got about, I don't know, about 60 probably
03:23
in all reality, so I've got Sam working like crazy and Stewie as well.
03:26
The guy who set up this whole Pimp My Snack website, by the way, is called Pete.
03:30
He is the Pimp Daddy himself, and he said, good luck to you on planning to pimp your Creme Egg. We will show the results.
03:36
Sam, you're not supposed to eat them.
03:37
You're going to be so sick.
03:39
By the end of this, by the time we finish this entire thing, it's going to be 8,000 calories inside that one egg.
03:46
We can try and get through it. So if you're one of those people who thinks that certain snacks have reduced in size over the years, the idea this morning, or today, because
03:52
it's Easter and lots of chocolate fun going on, is to supersize them, make gigantic versions of your favourite snack. We're going for the Creme Egg today.
04:00
Or this hour anyway.
04:02
[Opening clipped; likely “Scoop out the innards”] of the Cadbury's Creme Eggs.
04:04
It's a very messy process, but it's really great fun licking it off your fingers afterwards.
04:09
But, and Sam was just making the point that inside every Creme Egg that you open, it's not a standard amount of gloop.
04:16
It's kind of some have more in, some have less in.
04:18
We're a bit worried we might run out of a Creme Egg filling to fill up our hollow egg at the moment. But, you know, we got through about 30 at the moment.
04:24
Might have to send out some urgent emergency supplies.
04:27
This is, can I just say, if you haven't made any plans and you've got kids or you've got mates coming around and you want something to do, this is so much fun.
04:34
It's Pimp My Snack. What you're doing is you're making gigantic sizes of your favourite snack, whether it's Maltesers or whether it's Wagon Wheel.
04:43
And we are taking photographs at the moment.
04:45
We will display them on our website.
04:47
Let me know if you're doing this as well and how you're getting on too.
04:50
The text, ah, text is broken actually.
04:51
Email jo.whiley at bbc.co.uk.
04:54
Sorry, I'm just holding my hands out here.
04:55
I can't actually touch any of the buttons or knobs I'm supposed to be touching because they've just got Creme Egg gloop on them.
04:59
Oh, a large amount of respect to [Kapil?], to Luke and to Katie.
05:03
You've just sent us through a picture of a giant Creme Egg that they made yesterday.
05:07
54 Creme Eggs, 20 mini Creme Eggs, two big Easter eggs, £23 and four hours later.
05:15
And they've shown us a picture of their Creme Egg.
05:18
That's what we're attempting to do at the moment.
05:20
And they say, good luck.
05:21
It's trickier than it looks. I know it is.
05:23
It's really tricky. You just kind of get gloop all over your fingers and stuff.
05:26
And by the way, we've got 40, I think.
05:29
Yeah, we're getting the filling of 40 Creme Eggs at the moment to one large hollow egg.
05:32
As I said before, it's really, really good fun.
05:34
So if you haven't got anything to do over the next few days or so, then try this because it's a lot of fun. But beware, it's 8,000 calories when you make your giant Creme Egg.
05:41
Altogether, 8,000 calories in there.
05:43
And as Stewie said, that's four days food.
05:45
[Opening unclear: “…try to do today.”] There is a website that's kind of doing this sort of stuff as well, which is PimpMySnack.com.
05:50
Go and have a look at that for some more ideas.
05:51
But I want to know how you're getting on. Obviously, a lot of people are just kind of knee-deep in chocolate at the moment and fondant icing.
05:56
We know the feeling. But let me know how it goes.
05:59
Send us pictures through as well if you do manage to make something.
06:02
[We're] staring at the moment at two halves of one large egg filled with the inside of 50 or so Creme Eggs. And then this just kind of mound of shell carcasses.
06:12
It looks like, I don't know, a load of dung beetles, but just their carcasses all piled up. That's the redundant Creme Eggs, obviously.
06:19
If you want to make this yourself, you need one big hollow egg, as many Creme Eggs as you can find or afford.
06:25
You need two spoons, two knives.
06:27
You then cut open the big eggs.
06:30
So you've got these two halves. And then you scoop out the inside of all the tiny eggs.
06:33
It's really difficult cutting the tiny eggs.
06:35
It really is hard. [wording unclear].
06:36
They kind of just don't go the way you want them to go, like in half.
06:39
They splinter. Anyway, and that's the idea.
06:41
Then you scoop that out and you put it into the hollow egg.
06:43
Then you have to seal them.
06:45
That's what we're about to do at the moment.
06:46
The idea is you heat the edges of the large egg and then you pick them up and you seal the two halves together. Whack them together and hope that they stay there together.
06:57
Whether the shell's going to take the strain of the amount of fondant yolk inside it, I have no idea, or whether it's going to crack.
07:02
We're going to find out in just a minute.
07:04
I just had an email from the [“Sharkies” — spelling uncertain], who are the people that I mentioned who made their own giant Creme Egg. Hey, you lot.
07:09
Thank you very much indeed. They sent a brilliant picture through.
07:11
Well, I'm going to try and get it on the website if you can.
07:13
And they just said, don't use the melted chocolate shells to seal your egg.
07:16
It melts the egg. That's what happened to our first attempt.
07:18
It's better to try it and use some spare goo.
07:21
Ah, to use the goo as glue.
07:23
We didn't do that. We got a lighter and we kind of melted all around the edge of the egg and then just stuck them together really, really quickly.
07:30
And I'm just looking at the egg now and I can see there were a couple of cracks in it.
07:32
We've stuck it into a mould. And also, look, Sam, the gloop, it's dripping down the side.
07:38
It wasn't supposed to happen. That wasn't part of the plan.
07:40
Sam, we need somebody to road test the egg for us, really.
07:43
Oh, there we go. Oh, James.
07:45
Fancy seeing you here. Well, maybe we can leave that till the end.
07:48
I'll do it then. It looks truly disgusting.
07:50
Will you vomit if I make you do it now?
07:52
And as a rule, I only like dark chocolate, but, you know.
07:54
Oh, God, I hate dark chocolate.
07:56
But whatever. I'll do it for the show, Jo.
07:58
All right, thank you. I'll do it for the show. So your favourite Easter egg would be a dark chocolate Easter egg? Yeah, organic dark chocolate.
08:04
Very nice. Come on.
08:05
Oh, you're such a ponce. Caramac for me.
08:08
Anything will do for you, won't it?
08:10
Especially Caramac. Right, okay.
08:12
Can you see the Creme Egg by your side?
08:15
Yeah, I can smell the Creme Egg as well. But the air in the studio today is, like, heady with sweet, sickly scent. A bit giddy. Yeah. A little bit drunk on chocolate this morning.
08:22
I'm going to get you to eat that in a bit. Great. Yeah.
08:24
Right. Yeah, there is a gigantic Creme Egg now. We made it ourselves, in very much a Blue Peter style. So I'd quite like you to break it open and eat it, if you like. Bearing in...
08:34
mind I don't normally like this. No, I know. You only like pretentious eggs. Pretentious. Right. So we've got quite a big crack in the egg at the moment. I...
08:46
don't think you should use a spoon, you see. I think that's cheating, James. I think you should try and pick it up. We've got David, who's a lovely photographer. He's taking photographs...
08:52
of this. Yeah, okay. Here we go. Right. Eat and be sick. [Wording unclear] up for the cameras. The egg is going in the mouth now. There is gloop dribbling...
09:02
from James's mouth. Does it taste good?
09:04
Do you like it? Try and speak now. I can't speak. This is going to stick in my mouth. Yeah, James. Can we get some more, because we didn't...
09:12
get that. I'm getting a sugar rush, though. Okay. So pick up the whole egg, and then— It's going to give way, isn't it, under the strain? There is so much fondant icing there.
09:21
Oh, that's vile. Oh! Looks like your egg's just done a poo. Right, James. Oh no. How are you feeling?
09:29
I'm feeling really, really sick. I can genuinely recommend, if you want to waste a couple of hours, this is just the best fun—to try and make one of these eggs. Supersize your favourite snack. Do you want another bite?
09:39
It's fine, thanks. You sure?
09:41
See you later. Photographs are online now if you want to have a look at us making our eggs, get some advice on how to do it, and also James King eating that egg. You really have gone very...
09:50
pale and slightly green around the gills. They'll be there: bbc.co.uk/radio1.
PimpMySnack.com had been online for less than two weeks when it reached the Radio 1 studio. Jo explains the idea using the early Wagon Wheel, KitKat and Jaffa Cake pimps before setting her team to work on roughly sixty Creme Eggs.
The feature is also a rare contemporary on-air credit for the site's founder: ‘The guy who set up this whole Pimp My Snack website is called Pete. He is the Pimp Daddy himself.’
27 Apr 2006
Live transcript
Ready to follow playback
00:00
Presenter: It's [presenter names unclear] here, it's BFBS Radio 1, on a Thursday.
00:04
Presenter: Now, there's a new website taking the internet by storm. To tell us all about PimpMySnack.com is the man they call Pimp Daddy, but his real name's actually Pete.
00:14
Presenter: Hi Pete, how are you?
00:15
Pete Wilcock: I'm fine, thanks.
00:16
Presenter: Hi Pete. Here he is.
00:18
Presenter: Pete, first of all, tell us exactly how the site works.
00:21
Pete Wilcock: Well, basically, a load of random people on the internet send in their pimped up version of their favourite snacks.
00:28
Pete Wilcock: I stick them online and everyone votes for them, see which one's the best.
00:32
Presenter: Okay. Now, Pete, how old are you?
00:33
Pete Wilcock: I'm 23.
00:34
Presenter: Do you live at home?
00:37
Pete Wilcock: Well, I live at my home, not my parents' home.
00:38
Presenter: Oh, I was going to say, I had visions of your mum coming back from the shops and...
00:41
Presenter: You're not making a gigantic wagon wheel again, are you?
00:44
Pete Wilcock: No, thankfully not.
00:46
Presenter: So, when you say, like, pimped up version of snacks, what exactly do you mean by that for people who haven't seen the site?
00:51
Pete Wilcock: Well, quite a few people take pimped up to mean, you know, enlargement, so most of the snacks are just bigger versions of the classics, but for other people, pimped also means just changing it and making it better and adding something a bit different to what you'd normally expect.
01:05
Presenter: Whose idea was this?
01:07
Pete Wilcock: It was a kind of, it was a strange kind of thing that came about on the internet where I just, I got a chunky KitKat peanut butter and I just took their peanut butter out and put in my own peanut butter just to see how it would taste.
01:20
Pete Wilcock: I put this online and there was a good reaction to it and somebody else actually suggested that I put it onto a website.
01:27
Pete Wilcock: And so I did, and the same guy that suggested it then sent me the first pimp, which was the massive KitKat, and from there everyone passed the website address around and around and around and around to the point where, you know, there's now thousands of people visiting a day and
01:40
Pete Wilcock: I'm being completely overwhelmed by new pimps.
01:42
Presenter: So how long has that actually been running then?
01:44
Pete Wilcock: It actually got started on the 3rd of April, so it's not even a month.
01:48
Presenter: And most people are talking about it, yeah.
01:50
Presenter: You should, you should, you should do a TV show, I think it's a fantastic, you should pitch it as a TV show.
01:54
Presenter: You could get, like, Tim Westwood to do, like, a snack version of the, the MTV one.
01:58
Presenter: I think it'd be brilliant.
02:00
Presenter: Or, like, something like the guys from Jackass doing this sort of stuff would just be hilarious, I think.
02:04
Presenter: How, how is the website actually funded then, Pete?
02:07
Presenter: Are you paying for this, or?
02:08
Pete Wilcock: I currently am paying for it myself.
02:09
Pete Wilcock: It's quite lucky, really, because on the side I actually host websites myself, so I've actually got my own server to host this.
02:15
Pete Wilcock: Right. Which is kind of lucky, because if I hadn't, it would have probably completely overloaded anywhere else.
02:19
Pete Wilcock: I could have put it. So, yeah, at the minute, it's all by myself, and it's just about stayed online now.
02:25
Pete Wilcock: I've had to make a couple of upgrades just to make sure it stays running.
02:28
Presenter: Talk us through some of your favourites, some of the best snacks on your site.
02:31
Pete Wilcock: There are some pretty good ones.
02:33
Pete Wilcock: We've actually got a league table of the top ten, and the number one on the league table now is the Monster Jammie Dodger, which is currently rated about 9.4 out of 10, and it's a really good, really impressive effort.
02:45
Pete Wilcock: It's a really realistic enlargement of the original, real care and attention, you know.
02:50
Pete Wilcock: So that's definitely got to be one of my favourites.
02:52
Presenter: How big is it?
02:53
Pete Wilcock: I think they say it was about 30 centimetres across.
02:58
Presenter: You know, you couldn't get a cup of tea large enough for it, I think.
03:01
Presenter: We were in a right laugh this morning, because my favourite one at the moment is the Curly Wurly.
03:05
Presenter: It is massive! And this guy had drawn it all out and [wording unclear] and everything, hadn't he?
03:09
Presenter: He was great. That's insane. I've got to say, I like the Burberry Curly Wurly better than the original.
03:15
Presenter: Have you seen that one? No, I haven't seen it.
03:17
Presenter: I have, no. The wagon wheel's good, I must admit, that's just genius as well.
03:20
Pete Wilcock: That was second in the table.
03:22
Pete Wilcock: But I'm actually pretty keen on the Bourbon.
03:23
Pete Wilcock: I think, I really like Bourbon, that really huge one.
03:27
Presenter: I love some of the names of them as well, because there's a massive penguin biscuit on there, and they called it Emperor Penguin.
03:32
Presenter: It's very clever. Who are these people that do this, Pete?
03:37
Presenter: Who are they, or why do they do it?
03:38
Presenter: No, who are they?
03:39
Pete Wilcock: Well, they're random people.
03:40
Pete Wilcock: I don't know at all. I mean, they've literally just come across to the site, realised they can do their own, and it just seems to be this kind of thing where, you know, almost the whole family or all your mates can get in on it.
03:49
Pete Wilcock: So, a lot of the time, I get sent the pimps from, like, a group of people who have spent the whole weekend on the whole thing.
03:56
Presenter: [Presenter's wording unclear.]
04:00
Presenter: It does look like a lot of students.
04:02
Presenter: You've actually, you've got a forum on the site as well for the pimpers to chat.
04:05
Presenter: What sort of freaky correspondence have you been getting on that?
04:08
Pete Wilcock: Well, there's just lots.
04:09
Pete Wilcock: I mean, there's been suggestions for new pimps, you know, crazy things.
04:12
Pete Wilcock: Some people are trying to work out the logistics of how to pimp a huge jelly baby to realistic proportions, and there's been an awful lot of talk about how the jelly might not be able to stay upright, and, you know, how to properly use the gelatin, and all kinds of things like that.
04:28
Pete Wilcock: Well, the people are discussing all kinds of snacks, and, you know, where they can buy them, and how rare they are, and which ones would make good pimps, you know.
04:35
Presenter: Yeah. Crazy. Do you have any merchandise yet, Pete?
04:38
Pete Wilcock: We don't. What we do have, we're planning to throw some T-shirts out there, but what we've got at the minute is a T-shirt survey with a few designs, so if you can go along and vote for your favourite, the most popular ones at the end of the survey will, other ones, they're the ones
04:50
Pete Wilcock: that are going to get made.
04:52
Presenter: Excellent. Brilliant. Have you thought about trying to get some advertising on this site to keep it going, then?
04:56
Pete Wilcock: There are a few, there's a couple of discreet Google ads there, which if you click on will make me a few pennies, but I haven't really thought greatly about massive marketing campaigns just yet.
05:08
Pete Wilcock: I'm kind of waiting to see how it performs over the next couple of months, because everyone might be bored of it by next week.
05:13
Presenter: Fantastic. You should get Creme Egg on board, because you give them a lot of advertising on your site.
05:18
Pete Wilcock: Well, basically just...
05:18
Presenter: Creme Egg is definitely the crack.
05:19
Pete Wilcock: All chocolate suppliers, really.
05:21
Presenter: Exactly, yeah. Good luck with the site, PimpMySnack.com.
05:24
Presenter: Thanks very much, Pete.
05:25
Pete Wilcock: That's no problem.
05:25
Presenter: Thanks very much. Bye, mate. Cheers, Pete. Bye. Cheers.
Only 24 days after Pimp My Snack launched, Pete joined BFBS Radio 1's weekday Hatch & Duffus show live at about 1:45pm to explain where the idea came from and how quickly the community had grown.
It catches the project at its most precarious: thousands of visitors a day, an overwhelmed submissions queue, a self-funded server, an active forum and T-shirts still at the survey stage. The Monster Jammie Dodger was then top of the league table.
28 Apr 2006
Live transcript
Ready to follow playback
00:00
Presenter: Now, have you ever looked at a Jammie Dodger and dreamt about how you could pimp it to look proper gangster?
00:04
Presenter: And if you have no idea what that means, then join the club.
00:05
Presenter: Have you seen a programme called Pimp My Ride?
00:07
Presenter: Yes. I saw my 11-year-old watching it and I turned it off and I went, what are you watching that filth for?
00:12
Presenter: in a very Mary Whitehouse way.
00:13
Presenter: And then I realised it's just people building...
00:15
Presenter: Cars. Beautiful, amazing over-the-top cars from old bangers.
00:19
Presenter: So, a guy has now come up with PimpMySnack.com.
00:23
Presenter: It's a website for those of you who love blinging biscuits.
00:26
Presenter: And he's on the line, Pete Wilcock.
00:27
Presenter: Hi, Pete.
00:28
Pete Wilcock: Hiya, how you doing?
00:28
Presenter: Well, very well indeed.
00:30
Presenter: Have you been pimping any snacks today?
00:32
Pete Wilcock: I've not myself, no, but I was putting pimps onto the website late into the night.
00:36
Presenter: Are you? So, well, give us a quick idea of the sort of snacks you're pimping.
00:41
Pete Wilcock: Well, there's been quite a few so far.
00:42
Pete Wilcock: Most of your classic British snacks, as you've seen at Jammie Dodger.
00:46
Pete Wilcock: We've also got Wagon Wheel and Bourbon and, of course, things like KitKats and Twixes and that kind of thing.
00:53
Presenter: It's a bizarre thing to do, if you don't mind me saying.
00:56
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, it is pretty bizarre.
00:57
Presenter: How did it come about?
00:59
Pete Wilcock: It was a bit silly, really.
01:01
Pete Wilcock: I mean, it was just me one day getting a KitKat chunky with peanut butter.
01:06
Pete Wilcock: And I thought it would be a great laugh if I just sort of took out their peanut butter and put some of my own in and see how it tasted in comparison.
01:12
Pete Wilcock: And I did that and I stuck it on the internet and loads of people liked it and they said I should make a website out of that kind of thing.
01:18
Pete Wilcock: So, that's kind of what I did.
01:19
Presenter: Great. I mean, I know you're sort of making them bigger and better, but have you ever tried, if you get, you know, a chocolate finger and you bite both ends off and then you put the chocolate finger into a cup of tea and sook, like a straw, through the chocolate finger.
01:32
Presenter: After all the biscuit disappears and then you've just got pure chocolate and you just pop that in afterwards.
01:36
Pete Wilcock: No.
01:37
Presenter: Yep.
01:37
Pete Wilcock: I've never tried
01:37
Presenter: that. I can recommend that highly.
01:39
Presenter: Well pimped. Thank you.
01:41
Presenter: I never thought that would be said to me.
01:44
Presenter: Pete, many thanks for joining us this morning and good luck with the snacks at PimpMySnack.com.
01:49
Presenter: [Final sign-off words unclear.]
The morning after the BFBS interview, Pete joined regular presenter Fred MacAulay and that week's co-presenter Alison Craig live on MacAulay & Co. at about 10:45am.
The programme was over-running, so the conversation lasts less than two minutes. It still gets from Wagon Wheels and Jammie Dodgers to an impromptu lesson in using a chocolate finger as a tea straw.
2006
In 2006, the Pimp That Snack name was licensed to Que Pasa Communications for a series of short ‘mobisodes’ on Virgin Mobile's BITES service, aimed at people with shiny new 3G handsets. The picture quality and the gangster act are both very, very 2006. Consider this a small, mildly embarrassing time capsule.
2 Aug 2006
The F Word's team set food critic Giles Coren a challenge: take a snack that somebody on the site had already supersized and make it bigger. The result was Jaffa Quake, a giant Jaffa Cake baked in a paella dish with the help of a local pizza restaurant's oven.
The television team first approached Pimp That Snack in May, then asked contributors to recreate some of their best-known creations for filming. When the feature aired on 2 August, it brought a busy evening to the website and fresh attention to the people behind the pimps. Giles's photographs and step-by-step account are still here as the Jaffa Quake project.
29 Oct 2006
Live transcript
Ready to follow playback
00:00
Annie Mac: [Opening programme ident] Radio 1.
00:02
Annie Mac: It's Annie Mac here. Kevin sent me a fantastic link last week on the email for a website called PimpThatSnack.com.
00:10
Annie Mac: It's a very visual site.
00:12
Annie Mac: It's all to do with food and making new things out of food.
00:16
Annie Mac: And rather than get me to describe what I thought would be a better idea, to get the site creator on the phone and he could tell us all about it himself.
00:24
Annie Mac: Peter, are you there?
00:25
Pete Wilcock: I am indeed.
00:26
Annie Mac: Hello, how are you?
00:27
Pete Wilcock: I'm good, thanks.
00:28
Annie Mac: And cool, listen, in a nutshell, Peter, what is PimpThatSnack.com all about?
00:33
Pete Wilcock: It's just about how you take normal snack food, anything off the shelf, and you try and recreate it and make it bigger and better and just try and exaggerate it in any way you can.
00:43
Annie Mac: Now, how did all this come about?
00:45
Pete Wilcock: It was my fault, really, but it was all by accident.
00:48
Pete Wilcock: I got a KitKat Chunky with peanut butter, and I just took their peanut butter out and put some different peanut butter in to see how it tastes.
00:54
Pete Wilcock: and I took pictures and stuck it on the internet and everyone really liked it and someone suggested that I make a website out of the idea so that's kind of how it happened.
01:03
Annie Mac: So it all began with the KitKat [wording unclear]?
01:06
Pete Wilcock: Exactly, yeah.
01:07
Annie Mac: That's where it all began, okay. What is your favourite Pimp My Snack on the site?
01:11
Pete Wilcock: There are quite a few. The one I like the most has just been topped.
01:15
Pete Wilcock: Someone's made a giant Creme Egg but it's just so unbelievably accurate to the original.
01:21
Pete Wilcock: I mean, they've even made the fondant inside from scratch which is really impressive.
01:25
Annie Mac: Yeah, I saw that, I saw that. And, like, they've got the wrapping, like, perfect.
01:29
Annie Mac: It's incredible, yeah. Yeah.
01:31
Annie Mac: And how big is that?
01:34
Pete Wilcock: It's hard to... I mean, it must be about 30 times the size of a normal Creme Egg.
01:39
Pete Wilcock: It's mental.
01:40
Annie Mac: Amazing. Now, tell me, what tips can you give to anyone at home wanting to pimp their snack?
01:46
Pete Wilcock: Well, you shouldn't be put off if you're not a very good cook, because I'm not a very good cook.
01:51
Pete Wilcock: All you need to do is be enthusiastic.
01:52
Pete Wilcock: Just find something,
01:55
Pete Wilcock: you know, preferably chocolate, because that's quite easy.
01:57
Pete Wilcock: Get a load of other chocolate, melt it down.
01:59
Pete Wilcock: Just try and make it bigger and better, and just do what you can, really.
02:02
Pete Wilcock: As long as you try, that's all I'm kind of really looking for.
02:05
Annie Mac: The effort.
02:05
Pete Wilcock: Just the effort,
02:06
Annie Mac: yeah. And the dedication.
02:07
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, that's it.
02:08
Annie Mac: Okay, what next for PimpThatSnack.com, then?
02:11
Annie Mac: We were thinking in the studio, maybe get a bit of Westwood.
02:13
Annie Mac: He could present it.
02:15
Pete Wilcock: I don't think so, somehow.
02:17
Pete Wilcock: We're expanding a little bit. We're actually moving on to reviewing snacks now and that kind of thing.
02:21
Pete Wilcock: Are they? At some point in the future, we might get some kind of cookery book going, but just don't know how many people fancy that.
02:28
Annie Mac: Fantastic. And tell me, what is your current favourite snack?
02:31
Pete Wilcock: My current favourite snack? I'm actually going to try to get a bit healthy because all this snack pimping has been quite bad for my health in the last few months.
02:37
Pete Wilcock: So I'm actually having lots of hummus at the minute with carrot sticks.
02:41
Annie Mac: Wow, so well healthy.
02:42
Pete Wilcock: That's pathetic, isn't it, yeah.
02:43
Annie Mac: Okay, you'd have to make a giant tub of hummus.
02:46
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, that's it, yeah, that's the next one.
02:48
Annie Mac: there you go PimpThatSnack.com the link is on the list you can go and check it out be inspired make your snack bigger than it was before
02:58
Annie Mac: Alex in Manchester said his maths class made the giant buttons on Pimp My Snack.
03:01
Annie Mac: That's good. Keep them coming in.
03:02
Annie Mac: Have you pimped your snack?
Pete recorded this interview at about 8pm for Annie Mac's new Sunday-night Radio 1 show, which went out an hour later as part of its regular look at things worth finding online.
By October the renamed Pimp That Snack was broadening into snack reviews and considering a cookbook. A listener also reports that his maths class made the site's giant chocolate buttons—evidence that pimping had escaped the kitchen and reached school.
3 Nov 2006
Recorded on 5 October and broadcast on 3 November 2006, the appearance took the people behind Pimp That Snack into the Ready Steady Cook kitchen, with chefs Phil Vickery and Paul Rankin.
This is Pete's own quick panorama of the set on filming day: a small behind-the-scenes souvenir of the visit.
13 Dec 2006
Live transcript
Ready to follow playback
00:00
Presenter: Right, we've been looking at PimpThatSnack.com, where there's a fantastic website if you are of the disposition to create large versions of your favourite chocolate bars and sweets.
00:09
Presenter: Joining us on the line is the man behind it all, who's Pete Wilcock.
00:12
Presenter: How are you, Pete? Are you well?
00:13
Pete Wilcock: I'm fine, thanks, Bob. How are you?
00:14
Presenter: Excellent. Yeah, fine, thank you. Nice to speak to you, mate.
00:17
Presenter: How did this all start then, Pete?
00:19
Presenter: Is it true that kind of your own experimentation on a KitKat kicked all of this off?
00:23
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, that's exactly right. I got a KitKat chunky with peanut butter, and I thought one day, just for fun, that it'd be a good idea to take their peanut butter out and stick some normal peanut butter in and see what it tasted like.
00:35
Pete Wilcock: So I did that, and I took some pictures, and I stuck it on the internet, and I went from there.
00:40
Presenter: Would it be fair to say you have a lot of time on your hands?
00:43
Pete Wilcock: It was a very dull afternoon.
00:45
Presenter: Not for long, I bet.
00:48
Presenter: So what made you decide to put it online?
00:49
Presenter: I mean, I can see the merit of doing that in the comfort of your own home, but as a private gesture.
00:54
Presenter: But no, you wanted to share it with the world.
00:57
Pete Wilcock: I thought it was such genius, and I just had to share it, yeah.
01:00
Presenter: Did it taste different to a normal peanut butter KitKat, then?
01:03
Pete Wilcock: It was actually way nicer.
01:05
Presenter: Was it?
01:06
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, I totally recommend it.
01:07
Presenter: I would imagine that it would be, because the normal, the peanut butter that's in those KitKat Chunkies is nothing like peanut butter, is it?
01:14
Presenter: Nothing like it. It's like some fake, extra sugary thing.
01:16
Presenter: It's very, very sugary, isn't it?
01:18
Presenter: Oh, yeah. It's hard, disgusting, and sweet, yeah.
01:20
Presenter: So how do you go from that to making enormous versions of chocolate bars?
01:24
Pete Wilcock: Well, from there, you just kind of think, well, what can I do next?
01:27
Presenter: Yeah.
01:28
Pete Wilcock: And, well, might as well just get a normal chocolate bar and see what you can do to it.
01:31
Presenter: So give us a flavour of what else is on the site, then.
01:34
Presenter: What are your favourite pimps at the moment?
01:36
Pete Wilcock: Well, on the site, there's pretty much everything you could possibly think of.
01:39
Pete Wilcock: I mean, I think there's nearly nothing that's not been done now.
01:42
Pete Wilcock: Okay. But some of our top runners at the minute, someone's made a gigantic Creme Egg.
01:47
Presenter: Aww.
01:48
Pete Wilcock: And when I say gigantic, I mean it's bigger than an Easter egg.
01:52
Pete Wilcock: You know, it's a custom-sized chocolate mould.
01:55
Presenter: I was thinking, surely it's like an Easter egg, and they've separated the two and put it all in, but it's bigger than that.
01:59
Pete Wilcock: So, yeah, they've actually made their own giant egg, even bigger than the biggest Easter egg you could buy.
02:04
Presenter: Because this is, like, normally, when you get, like, a Creme Egg Easter egg, like, you would expect it.
02:10
Presenter: You know, I would want it to be full of the stuff that is actually in a normal Creme Egg.
02:14
Presenter: But they never are, are they? They're just hollow chocolate with a few, like, you know, some dodgy buttons inside it and a little plastic bag.
02:21
Pete Wilcock: But this is actually chock full of the stuff that's in Creme Eggs.
02:24
Pete Wilcock: They've actually made the fondant themselves and put it in both different colours.
02:27
Pete Wilcock: It's really authentic.
02:28
Presenter: That is absolutely genius.
02:30
Presenter: Are they thinking of selling it?
02:32
Pete Wilcock: I don't know if they have, but I think they'd get a lot of money for it if they did.
02:35
Presenter: Yeah, we'll put bids in. Absolutely.
02:37
Presenter: Well, is it on eBay? We'll have a couple of quid on that.
02:39
Presenter: So, are you still kind of creating your own, then, or are these sent in by people these days?
02:43
Pete Wilcock: I'm not. In the early days, I did make a few myself, but, yeah, quite quickly overtook me, and I found out I didn't need to anymore because everyone else just sends them in daily.
02:50
Presenter: So, have you eaten any of these things, then?
02:54
Presenter: Because I imagine it would take some doing to eat a full, you know, a Cadbury Creme Egg the size of a rugby ball.
03:00
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, when I made mine, it was pretty much all I was eating that week, and since I actually started this whole website, I have put on about two stone.
03:09
Presenter: It's worth it. Have you really?
03:11
Presenter: I really have, yeah.
03:14
Presenter: I am willing to see how ill I would feel after eating that Cadbury Creme Egg.
03:19
Presenter: Pretty ill. Yeah, but I would do it in one sitting as well.
03:22
Presenter: So, do you have to be a good cook to be able to do this kind of thing, then, or is it just, you know, because you do have instructions, don't you, on the website for all of these pimps?
03:29
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, it kind of gives you a cursory overview of what you should do, but, I mean, I'm not a good cook.
03:34
Presenter: Yeah.
03:34
Pete Wilcock: Literally, [wording unclear] melt chocolate and stick it into moulds and then sort of put ingredients in the middle of it somehow.
03:40
Presenter: Sounds a bit technical, to be honest.
03:42
Pete Wilcock: That's it, really.
03:44
Presenter: And he's still looking for contributions?
03:46
Pete Wilcock: Absolutely, yeah, especially coming up to Christmas.
03:48
Pete Wilcock: We're looking for some really nice Christmas pimps.
03:50
Presenter: Well, this is because I'm quite intrigued by this.
03:53
Presenter: I'm not sure I can think of anything.
03:54
Presenter: You got anything in mind?
03:55
Pete Wilcock: Well, I've been sent a couple already. Someone sent me a gigantic pimped advent calendar.
04:03
Presenter: How gigantic was it?
04:05
Pete Wilcock: It's very, very big. It's like no advent calendar you can buy.
04:09
Presenter: Each door the size of a regular advent calendar?
04:12
Pete Wilcock: Pretty much.
04:12
Presenter: Oh, wow. The size of a garage door.
04:15
Presenter: Like a series of lock-ups. It's just a street, really.
04:18
Presenter: Made of chocolate. So what was behind each door?
04:20
Pete Wilcock: Well, it's chocolate.
04:23
Pete Wilcock: It's about five foot high.
04:26
Presenter: That is amazing. Can you imagine having that in your front room?
04:29
Presenter: Yes, I can. Can you imagine people coming round for Christmas?
04:32
Presenter: You're like, oh, I'm just going to have my chocolate from today.
04:34
Presenter: I hope you don't mind. I'm just going to open the advent calendar.
04:37
Presenter: Have you got a crowbar? wrench it open.
04:40
Presenter: Fantastic stuff. So how can people get in touch if they want to send these through?
04:45
Pete Wilcock: All you've got to do, there's an email address on the website, and all you've got to do is send through a zip file of all the pictures you've taken.
04:51
Pete Wilcock: Right. Along with a description of how you did it, and it'll go up on the site.
04:55
Presenter: And you do kind of donate some money to charity through this as well, don't you?
04:58
Pete Wilcock: Yeah, we do. We're trying to donate some money at the minute for Transplants in Mind, which is a charity that helps raise organ donation awareness.
05:05
Presenter: Right. I did wonder if it might be some sort of diabetes charity you're working towards.
05:11
Presenter: Slight mockery. I'm kind of slightly relieved to hear that it isn't.
05:14
Presenter: Brilliant stuff. Well, look, I really appreciate you speaking to us tonight, and it is a fantastic concept.
05:19
Presenter: Should we do the plugs again? What's the website address?
05:22
Pete Wilcock: Oh, yeah, sorry, it's PimpThatSnack.com.
05:24
Presenter: Simple as that. Any sort of product?
05:26
Presenter: It didn't strike me, this is maybe a commercial market in this.
05:29
Presenter: Have you thought of putting a cookbook together or anything like that?
05:32
Pete Wilcock: We did actually start putting the cookbook together a few months ago.
05:35
Pete Wilcock: I mean, we even had a publisher.
05:36
Presenter: Really?
05:37
Pete Wilcock: But shockingly, they've pulled out at the last minute.
05:40
Pete Wilcock: No! So the cookbook is kind of technically written, it's just that we couldn't find anyone to publish it.
05:45
Presenter: I'm sure it's a situation that won't last very long.
05:48
Presenter: Yeah, we'll get cracking on that.
05:50
Pete Wilcock: Exactly.
05:50
Presenter: How could any publisher turn down a man with a five-foot advent calendar in his front room?
05:55
Presenter: Pete, lovely to speak to you, mate. Really appreciate it.
05:57
Pete Wilcock: You too, Bob. Thanks very much.
05:58
Presenter: That is Pete Wilcock from www.PimpThatSnack.com.
06:03
Presenter: Which is fantastic. Genius.
06:05
Presenter: We're still looking. If anybody would like to send us things that they would like to, kind of, you know, stuff that they're into, but they would like to see it become a little bit bigger, then feel free to do that.
Pete joined presenter Bob Fischer at about 7:20pm on BBC Radio Cleveland's Wednesday-night show Gobstopper for a look back at the site's rapid first year and ahead to Christmas creations.
This Christmas-period interview shows how far the community had grown. Contributors were sending photographs and instructions in ZIP files, the site was raising awareness for Transplants in Mind, and a cookbook had been written before its publisher withdrew at the last minute.
2008
Brendan Waller joined Gastronuts, the children's food-science programme presented by Stefan Gates, to show what happens when a familiar chocolate bar gets the supersized treatment.
The programme's team approached Pimp That Snack in spring 2008, while the series was still being developed under the name Gastronuggets. Filming followed in June.