Jamie Oliver dumped over saucy tomato affair (2024)

Spaghetti bolognese is great food, but you need the right sauce, right?

We found the right sauce: Jamie Oliver's "Tomato & Italian Red Wine Pasta Sauce for Bolognese".

Sadly this product is no longer on the Woolworths' shelves. We wanted to know why, so we took action.

We fired off an email to Jamie, asking him what was going on.

Funnily enough, we didn't hear back from Jamie himself. But John Broke-Smith did reply. John is the managing director of Viva Foods, which handles Jamie's products.

"Thank you for your email," John said.

"We have been stocking Woolworths with the Jamie Oliver sauces for nearly 10 years. Unfortunately, Woolworths made the decision a couple of months ago to remove the items from their range.

"As you have recognised, Jamie's sauces are made using high quality ingredients which makes them a premium product with a premium price point.

"The Jamie Oliver pasta sauces were selling around 5000 jars a week, but this was not enough for Woolworths to keep it in the range so it has been removed in favour of other products that may deliver larger volume sales.

"We are obviously very disappointed by the decision and this is particularly disappointing for his loyal customers in Australia as we had an exclusive relationship with Woolworths, so the sauces are not available in other retailers."

So there you have it, hot off the presses. Woolies dumped Jamie. Over to you, Coles.

Drone Delivery

Sticking with supermarkets, Topics hears Coles will offer drone delivery directly from the store to people's homes.

A pilot service is set to be launched on the Gold Coast on Wednesday from Ormeau Village Shopping Centre.

The service will gradually expand, delivering 500 grocery items including bread, fresh produce, convenience meals, snacks, health-care items and household essentials.

The plan follows a pilot program in Canberra earlier this year, in which more than 5000 Coles deliveries were made.

Some of the most popular items were fresh fruit, milk, bread, eggs, confectionery, snacks and cold drinks.

Sounds great, but will you deliver us some Jamie Oliver sauce?

Flying Kangaroo At War

Fred Saunders, of Waratah West, tells Topics that his daughter gave him a book for Father's Day called Red Tail Skies.

It features stories of people who worked for Qantas. "It is so Australian," Fred said.

"I didn't realise Qantas had such an involvement in WWII, or that Broome in WA had copped a real heavy attack from the Japanese, or that Qantas helped fly Catalinas from the US to Australia."

The book also described how Qantas used its Empire flying boats to "evacuate people from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, as well as run people and supplies into Port Moresby and other areas around New Guinea, Darwin and Broome".

Fred said we often hear about the bombing of Darwin, but not much about the attack on Broome.

"Apparently there were a number of Yanks based in and around Broome. When the attacks on Broome started, some of the Yanks disappeared. The book doesn't tell you if they returned."

That reminds us of our Grandad Bob, who was in the British Army. He hated the Yanks because they entered the war "too late".

Mind you, they did end it.