“OH NO, I forgot to cancel my bacon order.”

That was the cry that came from a good friend of mine, who discovered a package containing eight slices of bacon after he had signed up to a free trial of a new service that delivers rashers through your letterbox.

Putting aside the fact that “I forgot to cancel my bacon order” is up there with the most middle class statements I have heard – apart from the time I lost my temper in Asda when they had ran out of bistro salad – the idea of a bacon delivery service did pique my interest.

Especially the free trial bit. Free bacon? Delivered to your door? What’s not to like?

Bacon delivery is the latest in what is a bit of a resurgence for the humble mail order service.

When I was younger, my mam used to be a member of the Britannia Music Club. She was lured in by the free offer of a few albums, and thereafter they would send more each month in return for a membership fee.

The service was launched in 1969 by record company PolyGram, and members were required to buy six CDs in the first year and three in the second year at full price. The rest were all heavily discounted, and fairly random.

The idea was that you’d get your hands on music you may have never heard before, expanding your musical tastes. But in reality, you just ended up with loads of CDs you didn’t really want, while the free album offer only ever included a few titles, almost always including Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits or Tango in the Night by Fleetwood Mac.

Unsurprisingly, Britannia Music Club closed down in 2007, after the rise in popularity of online shopping and music downloads.

A lot of similar enterprises went the same way owing to the internet. On the back of the Daily Mail throughout the 1990s there was a running advert for hair loss treatment, or a natty pair of Farah slacks.

Before the days of anthrax and letterbombs, there was always something quite exciting about getting mysterious stuff in the post. Whenever there was a Britannia delivery it would always be a time of anticipation, which is why, I suppose, there is a new market for mail order clubs.

As well as bacon, you can rent DVDs and Blu-Rays, receive weekly snack deliveries, sign up to a vinyl club where you get five random albums a month. Probably a bit like Britannia but minus the Fleetwood Mac.

You can also join a club where you receive full meals in the post. Obviously, you have to cook then assemble them, but click a few buttons on the website and, hey presto, food in a box.

Then there’s the coffee clubs. I was a member of one of these for a while. I’d pay £6 a month for a small bag of coffee beans that included a paragraph or so about where they had been picked from, how long ago they were roasted and the best way to prepare them.

At first I thought it was exciting, but once you’ve paid £6 for a few months, the lustre starts to dull somewhat. There’s nothing fun about it. You’re paying over the odds for coffee. Single origin beans are available in Lidl for £2. I live two minutes from a Lidl. It would be quicker for me instead of waiting a month for a bag of coffee, to just go down the road.

Same goes for the bacon. There’s a good butchers at the bottom of my street. I can go and get bacon immediately. It isn’t served in an envelope. I don’t have to wait a month.

So as intriguing and quirky as these new clubs seem, there are better offers going on elsewhere. No doubt these clubs will go the way of the Britannia before long.