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Food

Judi Dench Hits Peak British and Celebrates Her Birthday with a Caterpillar Cake

Even national treasures love Colin the Caterpillar.
Photo via Twitter/Finty Williams

There is no greater joy, no bigger luxury, no better life decision, than a Colin the Caterpillar Cake from Marks and Spencer. The bug-shaped chocolate roll cake, adorned with white chocolate face and tiny edible feet, is a staple of office birthdays and excitable children’s parties.

But the cult cake isn’t restricted to eight-year-olds or unimaginative bosses. It seems that even esteemed Shakespearian actors and national treasures like Dame Judi Dench also call on Colin for birthday celebrations.

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Yesterday evening, Dench’s daughter, Finty Dench, shared a photo on Twitter of the actress smiling above a Colin the Caterpillar Cake with the caption “Happy birthday my beautiful, wonderful, inspirational Mama.”

Twitter users were, understandably, overjoyed at the thought of Dench turning 83 with the same cake you once punched your sister over for the last Smartie.

The Twitter hype is understandable. From this extremely important news, we can deduce a few things. Firstly, that Judi Dench is a people’s hero—nay, a socialist icon. She could have opted for a multi-layered, custom-made cake as a sugary celebration of her time on Earth, burning money in the face of the poor and unaccomplished. Instead, she opts for a seven quid chocolate roulade in the shape of a garden insect, clearly demarcating herself as Judi: woman of the people. Solidarity, comrade.

Secondly, everything about this is so perfectly British that even trudging to work through the horizontal rain on a bleak Monday morning seems less crap. Get yourself a cuppa, salute the queen, and find a small joy in the news that an extremely successful British actress is eating the same cake your colleagues reluctantly got you on your last birthday.

Thirdly, we now have indisputable evidence of something we long knew to be true: Colin the Caterpillar Cake is the greatest cake of all time.

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