A Teenager Filmed David Cameron Eating Pringles and the Internet Went Crazy

Last week, it was Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott chewing raw onions with the determined enjoyment of a masticating bovine. Before that, it's been Barack Obama getting brain freeze from waffle cones and the worrying thought that diplomats tasked with preventing nuclear war are fueled by string cheese and Twizzlers.

Politicians engaging in the basic human need to consume food is pretty trifling when compared to the kind of world-impacting decisions they're responsible for, but it's also weirdly fascinating.

For this week's instalment of Politicians Eating Weird Shit, we turn to David Cameron, caught red-handed in a solo snacking session via (what else?) a teenager's Twitter account.

A 17-year-old identified as "Ashleigh" on the social media site recently found herself on the same Portugal-bound easyJet flight as the British Prime Minister. Sitting a few seats away from Cameron and his bodyguard, the teenager was able to see the politician eating a tin of paprika-flavoured Pringles.

Ashleigh managed to film a video of her fellow passenger and uploaded it to Twitter, tweeting: "The prime minister was three seats away from me eating Paprika Pringles. Help me."

The video was soon picked up by several national news outlets (did someone say "silly season"?) and got an obligatory retweet from Pringles, before Ashleigh set her Twitter account to private, along with changing her bio to the understandable: "YES IM THE ONE WHO FILMED DAVID CAMERON EATING PRINGLES GOODBYE."

Speaking to BBC News, she said: "I found the experience humbling."

"Humbling" probably isn't the word most people would use after witnessing a man responsible for cuts to welfare benefits that have driven some Britons to suicide eat crisps on a foldaway tray table, but Cameron's inflight snacking is certainly a lot less painful to watch than his attempts at eating a hot dog with a knife and fork or that time he pretended he ate a pasty at a Leeds railway station.

In the 24 hours since Ashleigh's video emerged, The Daily Telegraph et al have gone HAM on how Cameron eating crisps and flying economy to Portugal ("and on an easyJet flight, no less") is definite Man-of-the-People behaviour, and The Daily Mail launched a hard-hitting probe into what makes paprika-flavoured Pringles so addictive, but the real question—aside from, y'know, what his government plans to do about the burgeoning migrant crisis in Calais or the number of overqualified British graduates stuck in low skill jobs—is why paprika, Dave?

Everyone knows sour cream and onion is the best Pringles flavour.