Spam: the documentary

I've known about this documentary, shown on CBC's The Lens, for a while but only got the chance to see it on the weekend.

Produced by Chocolate Box Entertainment the documentary follows David Manning on his quest to discover all things spam.

You have to give him credit for being comprehensive: he visits the SPAM (as in horrid food stuff) factory and gets their take; talks with the Monty Python comedian whose skit was responsible for the labeling of the computer phenomenon 'spam'; meets the person acknowledged as the very first person to send a mass marketing message using computer technology - 'father of spam'; looks into the battle against spam and the negative economic and technological consequences of it; tries to meet with a 'spammer'; and best of all actually tries out the products that spam sells. Seeing Manning in his 'weight loss' outfit is priceless.

It's a a great little doco, if I have attached a link to an excerpt below, but if you get a chance to view the entire piece I highly recommend it.

Click here to watch an excerpt.

NB: Did you know that according to the foodstuff SPAM representatives, if you spell SPAM in uppercase it means the foodstuff and lowercase 'spam' it means computer junk mail. Who knew! I think they might be a bit deluded in thinking that people make this distinction.