I guess it's something to do with the credit crunch, but it seems all the supermarkets and chain stores that have been around for a while have started promoting the fact that they've been in business for years. There are signs up all over the place saying "Established 1909" (John Lewis) or seem to 1884 (M&S) and I think Sainsbury's and Waitrose are also trumpeting their age. Relative newcomers like Tesco and Lidl, I believe, are keeping quiet on the matter.
Clearly some focus group has found that in these times of economic stress that people want durability and dependability, though it didn't seem to do much good for Woolworths who went out of business in their 99th year, tantalisingly close to their centenary. Couldn't everyone in the country have just gone down and bought some Pick 'n' Mix, just to keep them in business for one more year?
No.
No one cared then.
So I am not convinced it will make all that much difference now, but the marketing idiots seem to think differently.
I went down to Marks and Spencer this morning to buy something for lunch and was astonished to see queues stretching back for a couple couple of hundred metres from the door. What was going on? Was the credit crunch over? Was I going to have to queue to buy my overpriced superfood salad?
As it turned out I wasn't. These hundreds of people were queuing to take advantage of a crazy credit crunch offer where M&S were selling certain items for one pence (because, as I understand it, they started as a bazaar where everything was a penny - so were just like one of those everything a pound shops that fill the Uxbridge Rd - look at them now!)
Not surprisingly the things that were going for 1p were rather limited - cans of pops, bags of humbugs, a promotional mug, a frisbee (according to Collings - I didn't see that), some gawdy looking jewelry. Obviously all of it was worth more than 1p, but I'm not convinced it was worth queuing for an hour to buy any of it. Surely everyone's time is worth something. But people don't want to miss out on an outrageous bargain, even if they don't want or need the thing they're trying to buy.
Unfortunately the offer did not hold good throughout the store and my five or six items set me back over twenty pounds. If they're going to do a credit crunch nostalgic offer then really they should do it properly.
It was one of the many things that got mentioned on
the latest Collings and Herrin podcast. The podcast Richard Herring was in a particularly tetchy mood and bullied the weak podcast Andrew Collings a bit too much. But I am not in a position to apologise for him. If he wants to say sorry then let him do so. He is beyond my control.
We made a go of trying to be professional as practice for our upcoming stint on 6Music (we're standing in for Jon Richardson on the 31st May - 10am). Obviously we won't be able to swear then, or to talk over each other, and any whiff of controversy will probably stymie our professional broadcasting career forever. Still it might be worth it. Though in reality despite my podcast cruelty I am getting rather fond of the idiotic, unscientific, infuriatingly stubborn in his wrong opinions Collings and don't want to wreck things for him. He is living on the breadline as it is. In fact I am surprised he made it to the podcast when there were 1p bags of humbugs to be had just a short distance away.
If only he would cave in to my demands then I would happily keep him and be his sugar daddy. But despite me offering him 10 grand for his anal cherry (though from his reticence to discuss it, I am not convinced that he is not a born again bum virgin), following the example of a Romanian student who sold her virginity to an odd and unpleasantly antiseptic gentleman (who insisted on two medical tests to prove her virginity and also provided a certificate to prove he was free of sexual infection - and I thought I was seedy). Collings though, would rather be poor and unhappy than rich and unhappy and sore. I admire his stand in a way.
