Coffee Rats

Whole milk! Not oat! You don’t see that a lot. Not in London. That is rare. Ten points for that!

I’m very annoyed with myself that it’s taken me so long to get round to this one, but better late then never, hey. So, it’s very rare that I’m watching something on my own and I actually laugh out loud (that’s how old fucks like me used to LOL back in the day), but this one had me absolutely howling. If you’ve not seen it, the concept is funny enough; two middle-aged women harass people in London about what coffee they’ve ordered and have a scoring system based on the contents. Whole milk scores big but instant coffee garners a whopping 25 points if you can catch it.

However, the bit that really got me was the fact that one of the women’s last sightings of instant in the wild was outside Little Chef in Yeovil on the A303. Having grown up just down the road from there, it certainly resonated. In fact, my friends Steve and Nige used to work in the exact same Little Chef. They were… not model employees. I’m willing to overlook the fact that the establishment is actually in Podimore and hasn’t existed since 2018. But then I suppose there was no date on it anyway.

What helped move things a long is that badges the pair are wearing, which feature a crudely-drawn rat holding a cup of steaming coffee. I’ve smartened it up a bit and given it a dose of world-famous Seattle coffee shop branding that should be obvious to pretty much every human on Earth. Except maybe the lads in North Korea, Cuba and Iran. I kept the red eye because… well, it’s fucking mental, isn’t it?

Annoyingly, the internet does report this sketch as ‘coffee spotters’ rather than ‘Coffee Rats’, despite them explicitly referring to themselves as the latter. They do actually have a conversation about how their cheese-based strapline is quite confusing, so maybe I’ll let the internet off with this one.

As a final note, if my social media accounts are to be believed, Ellie (Black Mirror, Murder in Successville) and Natasia (This Time, Pls Like) have secured themselves a second series as of 2026. Well warranted, imo.