Never let it be said that The Daily Mail doesn’t have a sense of humour. Last week’s straight-faced headline must have masked an office full of guffaws at its Kensington headquarters, as they proclaimed boldly that five million festive birds were at risk.
Telling us at this time of year that the short-term future of turkeys isn’t so good is up there with the cop out about how your investments may go up or down. Pure genius – a prediction of Mystic Meg proportions.
As it turns out, the crisis it was referring to was bird flu and it told us that, as a consequence, we’d all be short of turkeys to eat this Christmas, which, in turn, would fuel inflation and increase house prices.
I’m kidding about the last bit. I didn’t get round to reading the whole article but, given the chance, I dare say they would have squeezed in a conspiratorial link to their favourite subject.
All of this got me thinking about the fact that there’s always a curious inevitability about retail at Christmas and that, to some degree, we all cling to the hope that all will be well with our world and our shops. We do this in the same way a child, who’s been told by their friend with the older brother that Santa doesn’t exist, knows the truth but feels they should carry on the pretence just in case.
Strangely, I take comfort in these peculiar festive occurrences. For instance, I like the fact that a big chunk of everyone’s advertising budgets will be wasted on TV, when they should be spending more online or in-store.
I also like playing the game where you sit in front of ads and shout at the TV, guessing which store is being advertised before it gets to the end. Next, you discuss how likely it is that the celebrity fronting that store’s Christmas campaign would ever be seen within a 10-mile radius of that shop. Yells of: “Oh I had that down as Debenhams and, look, it turns out it’s Next” are common. And: “Alan Hansen, doing his weekly shop at Morrison’s? I don’t think so”.
I know that’s not the point, but don’t spoil my fun.
Another inevitability and one that I find perplexing is the way hi-tech kit, like plasma TVs and the latest computers, are still going down in price and are always sold on TV by fast-talking, dim-witted, overly chummy teenagers, whose chief skill seems to be the ability to read key selling points from the point of sale extremely quickly without a break in their salesman smile.
I get the bit about not feeling intimidated when you buy this stuff and how important it is to some people to feel comfortable buying products from their peers, but wouldn’t it be nice to buy something from someone a bit older who you could trust and who you believe genuinely knows more about the product than you do?
Jacqueline Gold, chief executive, Ann Summers
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