The brand leading the bland…
HELLO MILL ROAD!
It’s a full week since those very nice people at Tesco unveiled their latest store on Mill Road, Cambridge. It may be spitting distance from where I type and seemingly doing brisk business, but the simple fact it’s even open leaves a sour taste. There’s no need to list the main objections here – they’re ably summed up by the No Mill Road Tesco campaign, whose well-organised and cogent opposition seemed to win the initial rounds of an increasingly lopsided bout. Yet despite the initial nay-sayings of an ultimately lily-livered local council, the supermarket bullyboys ploughed full-steam ahead, swatting away reasoned objections like so many meddling flies.
THIS NATION’S SAVING GRACE
Local as this is, it’s only small beer to the increasing megalomania of this modern day god of Mammon. The other week George Monbiot wrote eloquently in The Guardian of the giant’s plans to launch a 27,000 square-foot superstore in the small market town of Machynlleth, mid-Wales; and most salient souls surely balk at the oft-bandied figure that Tesco accounts for £1 in every £7 spent on the UK high street (and, moreover, £1 in every £3 on food). And that’s not even touching upon their colossal Club Card revenues or planned assault on the UK banking sector.
1. FAT CHANCE
It doesn’t take a genius to do the math that if a third of the population are regularly buying their food from Tesco then, indirectly or not, they are also culpable for the UK’s alarming rise in obesity (not to mention side effects like high blood pressure, diabetes and coronary heart disease). We are fast becoming a nation of fatties and porkers, ingesting so much beige filler our bodies are helpless to counteract the three-pronged assault of stodge, starch and sugar. Now I’m no healthy eating evangelist – my crisp consumption alone would put Helena Christensen to shame – but roly-poly clearly isn’t a good look on anyone.
2. PIMP UP THE JAM
You are barely through the automatic doors of Tesco, Newmarket Road, when you are placed on the horns of a dilemma. Immediately in eye line is a stacked display, fit to bursting with five bagged Tesco jam doughnuts for a piffling 65p. Tempting to say the least – and it would be a shame not to load up on those essential calories before you even direct your trolley at nasties like the fresh fruit and vegetables.
3. NUT JOBS
Imagine you have a child with a severe nut allergy. It’s obviously helpful when supermarkets clearly label foods containing nuts so you know to avoid them. Not at Tesco. They operate a ‘defensive labeling’ policy which means they put a nut warning on all their own branded products (yes, Mr White, even lemonade) to counter any threat of litigation. Cheers.
4. LIFE LESS SWEET
In the face of some rather stiff competition – particularly the celeb-heads eulogising ‘fresh’ produce at Morrisons – Tesco indubitably have the rankest, most irritating TV ads of the lot. Prunella Scales’ woeful mother figure may well have been retired (to cheers from here, certainly), but the drawn-out Lancashire vowels of her bickering daughter/sidekick Jane Horrocks continue to cut curd cheese at 20 paces. Still, the irritating songstress turned voiceover hussy has to earn a crust after a downward-spiraling film career that flatlined in 1990 with Life Is Sweet.
5. TESCO FINEST
Even if it’s more than a mere packaging ruse to up the profits on certain foodstuffs, those two words still feel like a misnomer. But I’d happily part with the pennies if the Tesco Finest range took a leaf from Horrocks’ Life Is Sweet co-star Timothy Spall and came up with a range of delights including Saveloy On A Bed Of Lychees, Liver In Lager and the still imperious Pork Cyst.
EVERY LITTLE HELPS
With sites such as Hate Tesco and Tescopoly already awash with anti-Tesco diatribes, perhaps it’s best to end on a positive note. So here’s a few things I like about Tesco (but won’t be sampling again any time soon):
1. Tesco Crunchy Sticks (Salt & Vinegar)
Narrowly better and certainly more addictive than Co-Op’s own brand, if slightly more pricy (and only 13% of salt per serving!)
2. Tesco Chicken & Mushroom Slices
But only when eaten cold, and only ever to mop-up a hangover (30% salt per serving – that’s more like it!)
3. Nicky Tesco
Okay, nothing to do with the store at all, but the lead singer of Camberley punkateers The Members, whose 1979 hit The Sound Of The Suburbs remains a minor classic. Though even Mr Tesco can’t have failed to raise a wry smile that its follow-up, Offshore Banking Business, should so closely mirror the alleged activities of his corporate namesake in the tax havens of the Cayman Islands.
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