Slashing, not ripping

Tesco’s new pile ’em high and flog ’em cheap outlets are called Jack’s. The name-giver or eponym for the stores is the lively founder of Britain’s favourite grocer’s, the late “Slasher Jack” Cohen. Perhaps “Jack the Slasher” was thought too alarming for a family supermarket, but the risk is for plain “Jack’s” to be lost in the forest of jackery which the English language favours for everything from jack-plugs to jackboots. Jack Wills attracts one end of the social spectrum to preppy clothing shops for youngsters with a fantasy of wearing an outfit for “uni”. At the other end is Jack the Lad. Snobbish Estella in Great Expectations exclaimed at rough Pip: “He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!” If Pip hadn’t been so self-conscious, he might have embraced the principle upon which we all, grocers or not, now agree: “Jack’s as good as his master.”