English lamb

English lamb sizzles as Dutch vie for Barbequer of the Year.

It’s barbeque tongs at dawn in the Netherlands thanks to FFB, which is promoting English lamb through a massive national competition to crown the Dutch Barbequer of the Year, in conjunction with Keurslager, the largest butchery chain in the Netherlands.

Keurslager has 560 stores across the Netherlands and is a more mainstream brand than any equivalent butcher in the UK. It’s a great vehicle for FFB to help EBLEX/ MLC to promote English lamb, as Keurslager will use a national TV campaign, radio commercials, brochures and in-store marketing, all of which feature English lamb as the ingredient for a perfect barbeque experience.

It's raining (weather)men!

The campaign’s silver bullet is Piet Paulusma, who has the unusual honour of being the Netherland’s celebrity weatherman. Famed for presenting his forecasts from a different village or event every day, Piet Paulusma is a well-loved figure in the Dutch media, watched daily by over a million people. He is conducting the search for the Barbequer of the Year over the summer, and his involvement in the campaign takes it to a new level of fame. English readers over 20 might compare his profile to GMTV weatherman Fred who presented the weather from a floating map in the Liverpool docks in the 1990s.

And it gets better. Not only is the sale of English meat growing, nature is cooperating too. This spring was the warmest in three centuries so the Dutch barbeque season had an early start. Something to think about as the British floods subside and the country wrings itself out.