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THE STORY BEHIND THE BRILLIANT NONSENSE THAT CAPTURED A NATION!

Long ago in London...before Dorothy L. Sayers was a celebrated crime novelist, she was a copywriter at a London ad agency — and in 1926, she was handed an unglamorous assignment for Colman's Mustard: 

Make mustard exciting.

Her solution was audacious. Mysterious posters began appearing on London buses asking a single baffling question: 

“Has Father Joined the Mustard Club?” 

No explanation. No product. Just that strange, slightly accusatory question dangling in the public consciousness.

Then she built the world. The Mustard Club was a fictional members’ club, complete with pompous characters — Baron de Beef, Lord Bacon of Cookham, Lady Hearty, and the club secretary, the magnificently named Miss Di Gester. 

There were official Rules (“no member shall tip a waiter who forgets to put mustard on the table”), a secret password (“Pass the Mustard, Please”), newsletters, recipe books, cartoon strips, a music hall song, and even spoof newsreel films.

The public lost their minds over it. 

At peak mustard mania, the club was attracting 2,000 applications a day, with ten office staff doing nothing but mailing out badges. By the time it closed in 1933, half a million badges had been sent out.

Not bad for a cheeky idea 

and a bit of mustard.