It was all meant to be so straightforward. Head to Cornwall, lock the media in a large cupboard, walk round a factory, eat some chips, then stand in front of some TV cameras saying the words "strong and stable leadership" over and over and over and over again.

And it would have been straightforward, but for the minor setback that our Prime Minister cannot eat a chip without displaying utter contempt for everything a chip is and everything a chip stands for.

In Theresa May’s defence, not everyone is so aggressively photographed in the act of chip consumption. It may be that all of us, without even realising, eat our chips while simultaneously staring at them in complete disgust.

Perhaps we are all, at the moment of biting into a chip, so taken by its self-evidently fluffy, fat-embalmed, potatoey deliciousness, that we do not know that are faces become temporarily and involuntarily fixed into a mask of infinite revulsion.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May enjoys some chips during a campaign stop in Mevagissey, Cornwall (Reuters)

Perhaps it’s personal. Perhaps the chip was a Lib Dem. Perhaps it was a show of defiance from Theresa May. This was her saying: "See this gob. It doesn’t just mouth the words strong and stable leadership over and over and over again. No it doesn’t. It’s going to bloody eat you. That’s what’s happening here."

This was her saying: "Every chip I eat will strengthen my hand in the negotiations with Brussels. If you see anyone else eating a chip, they are undermining their country’s future. Only I get to eat chips. No one else. And don’t forget, in Brussels, they put mayonnaise on these, the sick, disgusting perverts."

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is followed by journalists as she carries some chips during a campaign stop in Mevagissey, Cornwall (Reuters)

Still, lesson learned. There is no confirmed evidence that in her brief trip to a chippy in a Cornish fishing village, the Prime Minister either met or spoke to a normal, member of the public. But the trio of chip pictures will be enough.