Sparks f lying at Marks
STUPIDLY I signed up to do one of those “complete a survey and win a telly” things and soon found myself suffering flashbacks to my O levels. There were multiple choice questions asking me to rate packaging from 1 to 5 and other questions that just sounded like gibberish. “If your favoured brand of toilet bleach was a person,” one question pondered, “what kind of personality would they have?”
Then again, as THE TROUBLE WITH M& S ( Channel 5) demonstrated last night, some brands and stores do, in a weird way, possess a personality. People, including some of the contributors to last night’s programme, tend to be a bit snarky about Marks & Spencer calling it the place where Middle England buys its knickers and comparing it to Hyacinth Bouquet. It would be fairer, I believe, to think of the store as a much- loved, slightly elderly family dog. It’s always there, a gentle companion at key life moments.
Your school blazer, your interview suit, your holiday shorts, you probably bought them there and you probably remember buying them there. There was no suggestion that the family dog was about to make a last, sad visit to the vet but it was clear from punters, shop staff, top brass and rivals that things were going to have to change if the store was going to keep its market share.
The chain has always treated its staff very well, one strange consequence of that being that few of them leave. People grow old in M& S, meaning that according to some, new blood doesn’t get as much of a look- in as it deserves. That might be why the under- 30s aren’t shopping there, they’re not working there either.
A ray of hope, however, shines through Marks and Spencer’s underpants. Innovative, affordable and still the market leader, M& S underwear might lure in the customers who have doubts and keep them snugly loyal in lycra and elastic. In light of that, I’ve thought of a slogan. M& S: Saved by the seat of its pants.
Trying to sum up MISSIONS ( BBC4) to a friend the other day, the best I could say was “Neighbours meets X- Files, in French”. They get through a lot of story in the bite- sized, 20- minute episodes of this sci- fi oddity, whose starting point is the first manned mission to Mars.
There was a bit of a surprise awaiting the crew when they touched down on the red planet. Not green men but one, pale, gaunt white one, who said he was an astronaut called Vladimir Komarov.
He was in surprisingly good nick if he was telling the truth because Komarov perished on a doomed Soviet mission in 1967. If, by some weird quirk of space time, he hadn’t, he would be 90 by now, and he isn’t, or he looks suspiciously good for his age.
When Komarov vanished from the ship in last night’s duet of episodes, the crew couldn’t decide whether to look for him or abandon him to the unforgiving landscape.
The ship’s psychiatrist Jeanne ( Helene Vivies) believed she owed the mystery man a favour as he’d been her astronomer father’s hero. Others pondered whether Komarov was a plant.
In all this intense, Gallic debate, complete with hand- waving and shrugging, even out there in space, not one of these mega brains seemed ready to ask the obvious question. How come the Russian astronaut speaks fluent French?