Pot Noodle is 25 years old this summer. I didn’t get a press release informing me about it. I didn’t see it in a newspaper or on the TV. In fact, I’m not even sure that the Pot Noodle people themselves have realised it. I just remembered. Is that sinister? Should Pot Noodle really mean so much to me that I would mark its silver anniversary? By now, more than a decade since my favourite cheese and tomato flavour was discontinued with no sign of a reprieve, shouldn’t I have got over my sadness?

Back in 1979, it was love at first sight. I saw the ad on a Saturday night; the following morning, returning home from the park with my Dad, we stopped at the newsagents. There, I saw Golden Wonder’s new innovation. Their crisps were rubbish, but this looked promising. Being a spoilt little brat, I persuaded Dad to get me one and insisted that my pot of beef and tomato flavoured noodles be served up alongside the roast that my mother had lovingly prepared. My disappointment at their refusal was enough for her to voice concerns that her kids were picking up the kind of habits she associated with “the gypsy family down the road”.

In recent years Pot Noodle has sought to capitalise upon this sort of tension. Isn’t that the point of all those adverts that compare eating a Pot Noodle to visiting a prostitute? Clearly, someone has done their research and discovered that middle-class Britain longs to sit in its pants on the settee secretly slurping hot eggy string from a small bucket. In fact, such is Pot Noodle’s confidence that it’s even willing to have some fun with the idea. On its website there’s a bit where you can download a number of healthy wrap-around “disguises” for your Pots. Much as I worship at the altar of the Noodle, even I have felt the pressure to conceal the fact.

Fearful that my Noodle love would stop my wife thinking I was suave and brilliant, more than a year elapsed before I mustered the courage to bring a Pot back to our flat. Prior to that point I occasionally resorted to clandestine binges at those petrol station Pot Stops that spurt hot water into your preferred Pot.

And even when I finally took a Pot Noodle home, it wasn’t a real one, but something called Organic Snack Meal with Noodles. I might as well have microwaved a beaker of dishwater and dropped two bootlaces in it. If further confirmation were needed that the makers of Organic Snack Meal with Noodles had missed the point of the Pot Noodle, where was my sachet? The sachet, you see, is key to the Pot experience.

This element of interactivity — chutney for Spicy Curry; salsa for the Seedy Sanchez; and so on — serves to make you feel not entirely like a couchbound oaf. (And we couchbound oafs are very sensitive — that’s why no ready meal will ever have “Serves One” printed on the box.) The sachet is there to say: “You get involved! Here’s something for you to do!” And for a snack whose preparation involves little more than the addition of boiling water, Pot Noodle leaves you a surprising amount of room for expression. Personally, I stop a centimetre below the “Fill Level” mark to ensure a more gravy-like consistency; and chop a little fresh coriander into my Bombay Bad Boy. My mate Nathan deliberately leaves a little bit unstirred at the bottom so that a couple of lumps of powder remain stuck to the base, a policy he adhered to when enjoying the delights of Pot Rice and the much-missed Pot Mash range. “It’s a pure hit of flavour,” he informs me. “Like when there used to be a bit of chocolate underneath the ice-cream in a Cornetto.”

Of course, I wouldn’t want you to think that my palate has not developed since 1979. I can slow-roast a lamb casserole in the hay box that I made earlier; I can serve up a reasonable toasted brioche with foie gras and onion confit. But when I have only myself to please, it’s a different story. I’ll forego Heston Blumenthal for something more in line with Heston Services. In that sense, little has changed since that momentous Sunday.

So here’s to the next 25 years. And hey, Pot Gods, if you’re reading this, any chance of bringing back cheese and tomato?