Will Andy Burnham’s stockpile missive start a tinned food revolution?

If you are old enough to remember 70s London you will have heard of Big Biba, the fashion retailer that expanded into a huge, seven-storey department store on Kensington High Street in 1974. The opening of Big Biba mesmerised Londoners: the shopping experience was unlike anything else. The walls were adorned with groovy patterns while decadent displays and massive art-deco statues intersected the aisles. There was an enormous neon-lit restaurant, the “rainbow room”, which quickly became stuffed with A-list celebs, and above that stood the capital’s biggest roof garden, policed by a troop of pink flamingos, who strutted around its perimeter. It was part-department store, part-Disneyland. I, alas, am too young to remember Biba, but I’m enthralled by all the photos I have found of it online. Among my favourites is one taken in the food hall, which, remarkably, made canned food look glamorous. The hall housed huge shelving units, each six foot high, designed to resemble what they wer