A real sauce of irritation
WHENEVER I am in the mood to be colossally patronised – to be spoken to as if I have a mental age of nine or the common sense of a wasp – I simply scan the schedules for the next available consumer show. They rarely disappoint.
SUPERSHOPPERS SAVERS SPECIAL (C4) did a fine job in that respect, talking down to us for a whole hour about all manner of consumer issues, from squeezy sauce bottles to dog food.
Investigating the snack market, hosts Anna Richardson and Sabrina Grant highlighted a sizeable price gap between similar items sold by rivals M&S and Aldi – which, fair enough, was handy information. But could Anna simply leave it at that? Heavens, no. Noticing that Aldi’s boasts about comparative value were a tad exaggerated, based on a family eating hoisin duck wraps every day, she felt obliged to quip: “They’d be going quackers!”
In not entirely dissimilar vein, irritation-wise, Sabrina’s report on sauce bottles – revealing the likes of Marmite, mustard and mayo offered significantly worse value in squeezy plastic containers than in glass ones – had to be illustrated with a visit to an ordinary family, in this case the “squeezy-loving” Clarks. This included subjecting them to a dispiritingly banal glass-versus-squeezy challenge. “Who can empty all the contents with the least mess?” asked Sabrina, barely able to contain her excitement.
Once this pointless exercise was complete, the Clarks were given some shattering news about Colman’s mustard, another product they had been buying regularly in squeezy form. “You’re actually paying more money for LESS MUSTARD!” Sabrina told them – a piece of information which, I’ll admit, they could not possibly have acquired themselves unless they had managed to access a calculator.
“How do you feel about that?” she probed, a question crying out for the reply: “We couldn’t care less. Isn’t it time you were leaving?”
Of course there are worse crimes for a consumer show to commit than dumbing down. But oversimplifying more complex issues, as this one did with its report on dog food, seems pretty irresponsible.
In just five minutes’ airtime it effectively dismissed the possibility that so-called “posh” brands might be healthier for our dogs, telling us to go ahead and just feed them whatever we liked, provided the label said “complete”. Complete twaddle, I’d argue.
Talking of health issues, Carla Connor’s life-saving kidney transplant also worked, thank the Lord, in CORONATION STREET (ITV). But it sounded as if there had been a dramatic development afterwards. “Carla looks like a different person already!” was the startling news delivered by her dad, Johnny.
Not that such post-operative transformations are unheard of in Weatherfield. Another kidney recipient, Tracy Barlow, is a different Tracy from the one who went in for a transplant in 1995.
So maybe that is just hospital policy. “Weatherfield General: where we don’t just swap the organ, we swap the whole person, avoiding more hassle further down the line.”
In this case, however, Johnny was wrong. When we nipped back later to the ward, Carla did not look remotely different. She simply had one of those plastic tubes stuck up her nose. You would have thought her dad would still have recognised her. Honestly, he’s not the brightest.