Marks & Spencer’s offering for your loved one weighs 460g, is shaped like a heart – and is packed with innuendo

Name: The Love Sausage.

Age: Born on Friday.

Appearance: Two Cumberland sausages mauled into the shape of a heart, available in Marks & Spencer.

Thank God. I thought you were talking about a sex toy. I’m not, although M&S probably wanted you to think that. It’s a sign of the company’s restraint that it didn’t call it the Hot Throbbing Love Sausage.

Why is this a thing? Because it’s Valentine’s Day soon. Your partner (if you have one, no single shaming here) is probably sick of flowers and chocolate so it makes perfect sense for you to buy them what basically amounts to a giant balloon animal in meat form.

When you say “giant”? The Love Sausage weighs 460g. In real terms, it’s big enough for you to wear as a necklace. Perfect if you can’t afford diamonds.

That’s a lot of sausage. Yes. It’s much too large for you to try to fit it into a sandwich.

How do you know? Because I bought one and tried to do just that, and now it feels like my insides are about to burst open without warning.

That’s disgusting. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Why are we even talking about this? It’s just a sausage. Yes, but it’s a sausage that Marks & Spencer was smart enough to launch with a tweet. It quickly went viral, because if the internet likes anything it’s novelty meat that might feasibly double as a sex toy. With eggs inside, too!

Oh, eggs! Yes, this is the Love Sausage’s secret weapon. After you’ve baked it for 22 minutes, you take it out of the oven and crack eggs into the middle. The instructions say to cook them for eight minutes, but in my experience, this wasn’t quite enough. The eggs came out looking a bit …

Like … Yes. Like body fluid.

And what’s that on the sausage? Oh, yes, I forgot to say. The sausages are covered in bacon, like a protective sheath.

Are you trying to make this sound as unappetising as possible? Listen, it’s half a kilo of dead animal that has been named after a penis, and you’re supposed to present it to someone you love as a sign of affection. The whole thing came into the world unappetising.

Anything else I should know? The sausage I bought went out of date one day before Valentine’s Day. Which just about sums up my entire love life.

Do say: “Happy Valentine’s Day, darling, I’ve bought you the most wonderful gift.”

Don’t say: “It’s cardiovascular disease.”