I don't remember it featuring in the news coverage back in 2002, but apparently Saipan is one of the few places in the world where McDonald's restaurants have Spam on the menu, writes Frank McNally
Others include Hawaii, where Burger King also now serves the tinned pork delicacy (with scrambled eggs) to breakfast customers. And then of course there is Guam, the aptly named Pacific island where Spam-loving McDonald's customers contribute to the world's largest per capita consumption of what has been called a "gelatinous pork brick".
Celebrating its 70th birthday today, Spam continues to thrive in the face of ridicule. The brand's indestructibility was illustrated last year when its manufacturers, Hormel Foods Corporation, produced a special "Stinky French Garlic" edition as a spin-off from Monty Python's west-end musical Spamalot.
The original Python sketch - about a greasy-spoon restaurant in which everything on the menu includes Spam, and where a table full of Vikings burst into war-like song each time the product is mentioned - might have sunk a lesser ham. But 30 years on, the manufacturers only revel in their notoriety, featuring videos of the sketch at the official Spam museum in Minnesota, and adopting a similarly zany approach in their own promotions.
It's as if Pythonesque humour has been absorbed and added to the list of Spam ingredients, alongside sodium nitrite - "a mere hint" of which, in the words of the company FAQ sheet, is needed to keep the product pink.
Spam's success is due partly to a catchy name and partly to good timing. A previous version of the product, called Hormel Spiced Ham, was losing market share when the new name appeared on July 5th, 1937. But crucially, Spam also arrived just in time to play a starring role in the second World War.
The tinned meat was almost a secret weapon for the US. Not that American planes dropped cans of it on the enemy - although that might have worked too. It's just that Spam was a handy, non-perishable food for soldiers. It also featured in aid packages to allied countries, which is how in arrived in Britain in 1941. By the end of the war, a tin curtain had descended over Western Europe and the Pacific rim, and the empire of Spam was secure.
According to the company's trademark rules, Spam is an adjective: the product's full name being "SPAM luncheon meat". But of course words take on lives of their own, and over time Spam evolved into a generic noun: describing not just the original but other canned pork products.
In recent years the word has acquired a whole new meaning - junk e-mail - and also become a verb. This too was Pythonesque, with exasperated computer users now cast in the role of Terry Jones's waitress as they trawl their e-mail and find nothing but: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, and spam." But Hormel's sense of humour does not extend quite that far, and it fights any computer-filter companies that try to incorporate "spam" in their titles.
The last word on the product's birthday, however, must go to the poets who have eulogised it down the years. In particular, Spam has inspired a whole sub-genre of Japanese Haiku, of which this example is typical: "Black cat drags about/ His pink, purloined bite of Spam/ Like an extra tongue." Here's another, also taken from Spam-ku: Tranquil Reflections on Luncheon Loaf (published by Harper Perennial): "Perfection uncanned/ Like a beautiful redhead/ Fresh from her trailer." And one last, slightly less poetic, example: "Jelly for mortar/ Seven hundred tins and more/ I build a Spam house."
A good sense of timing is a vital thing for a football commentator. But like the poetic muse, it can let you down when you most need it and, even worse, desert you for a rival. So it was with the veteran ITV commentator Hugh Johns, who died last week, aged 84.
Johns was by common consent a better commentator than the BBC's Kenneth Wolstenholme. His combination of rich, velvety voice and boyish enthusiasm ("Oh, crikey!" was one of his favourite expressions) earned him three World Cup finals, starting in 1966. And there was nothing particularly wrong with his excited description of Geoff Hurst's hat-trick goal in the dying seconds of the Wembley final: "Here's Hurst, he might make it three. He has! He has! So that's it. That is it."
Unfortunately, elsewhere in the commentary box, the muse had settled on his rival's shoulder. As Hurst composed himself to shoot, Wolstenholme noted that: "Some people are on the pitch - they think it's all over." And when a split second later, the ball flew into the net, the BBC man was a like a defender who had somehow dribbled up-field, hurdled several tackles, and suddenly found himself with a tap-in for the goal of the century. He couldn't miss, and he didn't. "It is now," he added calmly, securing instant immortality, and ensuring that ITV's coverage of the moment would never see the light of day again.
Johns achieved some compensation four years later with his commentary on the greatest ever World Cup-winning team. Whenever you see Pelé's goal in the Mexico final, it usually comes with Johns's part-Portuguese accompaniment: "What a beautiful goal from Pelé! El Rey Pelé!" But he must have heard Wolstenholme's "They think it's all over" a thousand times since 1966. The BBC could only rub it in more now if they put the words on his gravestone.