‘Although the product on the news was a bag of rocket it still made me paranoid, so I looked closely at the chicken and bacon pasta salad that I’d bought for my lunch.’ said Paul, still visibly shaken at the memory of his discovery, ‘What I found was disgusting, there were lumps of what appeared to be dead bird all over it. It looked like it had been heated to around 200 degrees for a long period of time, then chopped into pieces and left in my lunch.’

Paul is taking legal advice before launching a claim for compensation, but it was not just the dead bird that he found.

‘I’m not 100% sure of this and will need to get it verified somehow, but I think there were strips of dead pig in there too.’

The discount brand, launched in 2009 to help Waitrose’s core customer base cope with the recession without having to downgrade one of their Range Rovers, was proving extremely successful. This success appears to have come at a price though, with the unwanted side effect of attracting the working class.

‘At first it worked fine, our regular shoppers were delighted with the new range, and common people were still put off by the Waitrose branding’ explained marketing director Rupert Thomas, ‘but as we advertised more, and made the mistake of including the prices of products in our TV commercials, we began to see some undesirable characters appearing in our aisles, enticed in by the prospect of finding a tin of beans for under £5, which they previously hadn’t expected from us. One horrid man even came in wearing a Hi-Vis vest looking for a sandwich. It was awful.’

The popularity of the ‘essential’ range had seen it quickly expand to include affordable versions of many foodstuffs and household items. To make matters worse Waitrose also starting pointing out that many of their prices were the same as those found in Tescos, attracting even more lower class shoppers and alienating many of their existing clientele. ‘It was so demeaning finding out that I wasn’t paying any more for my groceries than a common chav’ moaned former Waitrose customer Emily Hamilton-Brown. ‘I’ve gone back to doing my weekly shop at Fortnum & Mason now, just to make sure I don’t accidentally purchase something that’s buy-one-get-one-free.’

‘Hopefully withdrawing the products and stopping the adverts will stop any additional commoners coming in,’ continued Mr Thomas, ‘but we still have the problem of getting rid of the ones that have already started shopping with us. They’re still turning up, wandering around looking a bit lost and not buying anything. We’re thinking of putting up signs outside pointing out that Lidl down the road has some great deals on, or maybe we’ll just put down some traps baited with chicken nuggets so we can catch them humanely and release them in Asda.’

‘The thing about queuing is that you have to do it when you least want to, and often when you’re in a rush,’ explained a spokesman. ‘Now you’ll be able to visit one of our centres in your spare time, join the nearest queue and build up your supply of queuing minutes. Then simply cash them in the next time there are people ahead of you at the till.’

Although purists have criticised the scheme for taking the fun and unpredictability out of the classic British pastime, the government is convinced it will prove a success. ‘To celebrate the launch we’re giving away free prize draw tickets. You just take one from the machine when you arrive and wait for your number to be called out. We’re calling it the National Loitery.’

Screenie

‘It’s positively jam-packed with low-priced household and electronics goods,’ said Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, spokesperson for the group. ‘Its glossy pages have been designed to deliberately entice the poor and weak-willed amongst us to take part in a mindless orgy of consumerism. And it actively promotes the sin of sloth through its convenient Check and Reserve service.’

Independent research confirmed that the catalogue has now found its way into more than two-thirds of British homes; a stronger presence than any holy book or religious text. ‘Children who struggle to memorize facts at school, and even those who can barely read can tell you which page the Nintendo 3DS games are on,’ said Dr Williams.

‘And did I mention that over 10,000 prices have been either frozen or lowered in this edition?’ he continued. ‘In the time of rising costs all around us this is surely the dark magic of Satan himself at work?’

dicky37

‘Parents of course have a right to slap their children, but not everyone wants to see children being hit while they shop, so by creating slapping and non-slapping areas of the store we are meeting both needs,’ said a spokeswoman for Asda today. ‘Many of our patrons have complained that it can be difficult to land a proper blow when their child is writhing around on the floor of an aisle, so the provision of a purpose-designed smacking area will allow them to mete out a proper thrashing to their disruptive child away from disapproving eyes.’

The supermarket giant says the slapping areas will be in quieter ‘neutral’ areas of the store, rather than the traditional cereal or confectionery aisles where family conflict often flares up. A special sign featuring a raised hand and a tearful child’s face will guide parents to those areas of the store that are designated as slapping-friendly.

One parent who preferred not to be named praised the scheme. ‘My mum used to belt me really hard in the Co-Op bacon queue and it never did me no harm. How I choose to bring up my kids is my business. Troy, I told you. Stop making that bleeding noise or you know what you’ll get.’

With the idea proving a success, Tesco is now considering a similar scheme to deal with unruly small children, ‘Every Little Yelps’.

But not everyone supports the approach. ‘Of course you’d never catch me shopping in Asda,’ said one lady shopping at Waitrose today. ‘I can’t bear hearing screaming and yelling while I do our shop. That’s why I pay to send my children to boarding school so they can be abused by trained professionals away from the public gaze.’

nickb (hat-tip to Al O’Pecia)

But Paul was struggling for inspiration until in a break during Coronation Street his prayers were answered when he saw an advert for ‘Beautiful’ by Calvin Klein, which described the new fragrance as ‘the perfect gift for mother’s day’. ‘I was delighted,’ said Paul. ‘I could now make amends for the previous year’s mishap with not just a good gift, but a perfect gift.’

Paul headed out to the shops the following day, picked up the perfume and even splashed out the extra £1 to have it gift wrapped. He was all set with two weeks to spare, but then when he went out to get some lunch disaster struck.

‘I was feeling pretty good about myself,’ said Paul, ‘but then I saw a poster advertising Made in Dagenham on DVD as ‘the perfect gift for mother’s day’. How could that be? Suddenly I was confused as to which one actually was the perfect gift, and not wanting to drop myself in trouble for the second year running, I thought I’d better buy that too.’

Things soon went from bad to worse as Paul saw several other adverts and posters for various products all claiming to be the perfect gift. As of yesterday he had purchased 41 different fragrances, 37 DVDs and 35 books, the entire contents of a branch of Thorntons and a white-water rafting gift experience, at a total cost of just over £4,000.

Paul has now shut himself in his bedroom and is refusing to watch TV, listen to the radio or leave the house, and is questioning the veracity of the advertisers’ claims. ‘They can’t all be perfect,’ reasoned Paul. ‘I mean, if the rapids don’t kill her, the diabetes will. Next year I think I’ll just hire someone to do the laundry.’

His mother meanwhile is waiting to see if she gets Just Dance 2 for the Wii, which she has been dropping hints about for weeks.

Vertically Challenged Giant

Shoppers who guess correctly are allowed to use an express checkout staffed by a sulking teenager who will ignore them whilst chatting with her friend at the neighbouring checkout.

‘It’s a great scheme,’ said Tesco boss Terry Leahy, ‘and it adds a bit of fun to the shopping experience. I especially love it when shoppers guess ‘Nothing’ and feel quite smug as they leave the store. That is until the wheels fall off after walking 150m on block paving and their shopping is dumped in the car park.’

Housewife Kate Scutt commented: ‘It’s going to be a complete disaster. I buy it every year, but nobody actually likes filo pastry. Then there are the capers, the red cabbage and the celeriac. I never had any intention of cooking or eating any of it – I just bought it to look good. What am I going to do now? I haven’t got a tin of spaghetti hoops in the house. This is worse than cannibalism – we could all starve by twelfth night.’

Ian Searle