Guilty displeasures

Strawberries. Ella Fitzgerald. Lying on the beach. They’re three of my ‘guilty displeasures’. You haven’t heard of the guilty displeasure? That’s because the concept hasn’t been invented yet. But it needs to be — and quick.

The phrase ‘guilty pleasure’ is widely known. It was coined by the DJ Sean Rowley, who, not content with being the man on the cover of What’s the Story Morning Glory? by Oasis, applied a label to the songs we love despite them being uncool. The idea expanded, and now anything naff can be a guilty pleasure: chocolate spread, knitting, Countdown, you name it. But what about the opposite phenomenon, the supposedly cool things that we don’t like? When will we lift the social shame from admitting that something worshipped by everybody else just leaves us cold?

Strawberries, for instance. Underripe they’re like bullets, overripe they’re a cheap way of dying your clothes red, and for the 17 minutes in between they taste of not very much.