2 Monday May 2 2022 | the timestimes2
Kevin Maher
Don’t blame tractors!
My rules for men who
should know better
Cost of living:
Unable to do much about his energy
bill, Harry Wallop decided to target the
grocery shop — and signed himself
up for the strange world of Costco
T
he government would
have you believe that
inflation is running at
6.2 per cent. Is it
buffalo! Has Rishi
Sunak seen my Ocado
bill? Bonne Maman
raspberry jam went
from £2 to £2.80 a few weeks ago.
That’s a 40 per cent jump. A dozen
free range eggs have shot up from
£2.50 to £3.75, a 50 per cent increase,
and Kettle Chips, my favourite Friday
cocktail snack, leapt from £1.25 to
£1.90, up 52 per cent.
There’s not much I can do about my
eye-watering gas and electricity bills,
nor the fact the car now costs £100 to
fill up, and please don’t mention my
mortgage due for renewal. But I can
and have taken action to slash my
grocery bill. And the solution is as
glorious as it is delicious: I have
started shopping at Costco.
If you are not familiar with Costco,
that’s not surprising. It’s a cash-and-
carry chain that is huge in America
but hasn’t really taken off in Britain,
despite being here for nearly three
decades. It has only 29 outlets and my
local one requires me to drive through
a dodgy trading estate to get to it; it
doesn’t advertise, thinking billboards
and TV slots are a frivolous waste of
money; it won’t speak to the press —
its UK managing director, Peter Kelly,
declined to talk to me for this article;
and most oddly of all it requires you to
become a paid-up member before you
can spend any money there.
But those who’ve managed to
wangle their way inside tend to
become evangelical about the shop,
its low prices, its bulk packaging and
the sheer randomness of the products,
which encompass everything from
high-end smoked salmon to soft-close
toilet seats.
“I am a card-carrying member,”
Kirstie Allsopp tells me. The television
presenter, you may think, is a typical
la-di-da Waitrose shopper. Oh no.
“The whole family goes, it’s quite a
family day out. My kids particularly
love it at Halloween, and I adore it at
Christmas. It’s sort of a counterbalance
to my handmade, craft Christmas
programmes — their decorations are
huge, American, made-in-China and
great fun. I love their bath towels.
They are really good £11 big bath
sheets, really good quality.”
Aldi may be famous for its middle
aisle, where a rolling selection of
seasonal goods are put on sale, but
Costco takes it to another level. Before
you can get to all its food, you have to
push your oversized trolley through its
clothes, electronics and homewares
section. Last week it was selling Apple
watches, 75in Samsung televisions,
£400 ancient olive trees with gnarled,
thick trunks, Sage coffee machines,
electric scooters and an inflatable pool
slide that would put a Florida
waterpark to shame.It even has a jewellery section
where, improbably, you can buy a
500g bar of gold for £24,799.99. “My
favourite fact about Costco is that they
are the world’s largest seller of toilet
paper and diamonds,” says Bryan
Roberts, a leading retail analyst who
runs Shopfloor Insights. “I used to be a
member but then I stopped because it
was too dangerous — you go in with a
limited grocery shopping list and you
walk out with a PlayStation, a pair of
jeans and a whole load of paperbacks.”
He says the confusing layout, with
the lack of signs (or indeed decent
lighting), is not just to save costs. It’s
to get you to spend — even though
you have come to save money. “They
are very good at the whole ‘treasure
hunt’ aspect. It really encourages
impulse buys.”
I have an old friend, Victoria, who
tells me that she popped into Costco to
buy some frozen prawns for her
mother-in-law en route to a family
lunch. “And when we got there, there
was a £400 ceramic egg barbecue.” It
was one of those Kamado ovens, the
ultimate outdoor cooking accessory,
and about a third of the price of a
Big Green Egg. “My husband said:
‘We’ve got to buy this.’ I said: ‘Darling,
there’s no way that’ll fit into our
Porsche.’ But he told me not to worry,
we could hire a van from Costco to
take it away.” So they did.
But, on the assumption that you are
strong-willed and have a boot bigger
than that of a Porsche, there are
proper bargains, especially in the wine
and spirits section, where Glenfiddich
whisky, Martell brandy, Patrón tequila
and Bollinger champagne are all
cheaper than you can find elsewhere.
Château Batailley 2015, a particularly
good claret, costs £55 a bottle from
Majestic; it’s £39.58 at Costco. Miraval,
the rosé made on Angelina Jolie and
Brad Pitt’s Provençal estate, is £19 at
Tesco; it’s £14.38 at Costco.
It also has a very good selection of
own-brand spirits, one of which
Allsopp loves. “Its French vodka is the
same as that famous posh one,” she
says. I tell her, regretfully, that Bacardi
— the parent company of Grey Goose
— has denied the long-running
rumour that Costco’s vodka is Grey
Goose with a different label. “Well,
it’s very similar if you ask me! Once
you put it in a cocktail, no one knows
the difference.”
Everyone raves about the cheese.
“When we go on holiday we tend to do
self-catering and we’re a big family
and have lots of people to stay,”
Allsopp says. “So, we travel with a big
block of Costco cheddar and a block of
their parmesan. Always.” Its 15-month
comté is excellent, and at £9 for a 650g
wedge, half the price of Waitrose’s; its
parmesan is £11 a kilo and some 20 per
cent cheaper than Aldi’s (very good)
version. Its steaks — thick-cut sirloins
— lamb chops and slabs of pork bellies
are a barbecuer’s dream.P
oor Neil Parish. If
I had known about
him sooner I
could’ve saved him.
He could’ve avoided
resignation. He
wouldn’t have
watched porn twice
on his phone in the Commons.
And he certainly would not
have concocted that bonkers
half-defence about accidentally
stumbling onto X-rated material
via tractor websites with
“similar names” (it’s a mere slip
of the keys between
“tractorjunction.com” and
“pornhub”). And why? Because
of my porn guidelines, of course.
It’s the must-have advice for
middle-aged men who should
know better (basically, all of
them), from one who actually
knows. And it goes like this...
1 Don’t watch porn. It’s that
simple. Don’t be deluded by
your mates, by a cheeky
WhatsApp link that says
“Phwooarrr!”, or by the
mewlings of “sex-positive”
nitwits who claim that porn
is refreshing and that it can
be used to “spice up” any
marriage. Really? On what
planet is husband X greeted at
the door by wife XXX who says,
“Darling, you won’t believe
what I’ve just found on the web?
Some spiffing footage that we
can use in the bedroom tonight!
Because there’s nothing I like
doing more than searching the
internet for porn. Being a woman,
’n’ all that.”
2 If you have to watch porn, don’t
watch it at work. Despite the fact
that your professional position
will be immediately in peril (legal
experts say that watching porn at
work “can” amount to gross
misconduct and immediate
dismissal), it sends out all the
wrong signals about your attitude
to your colleagues, yourself and
your work environment. Whatsort of role is deserving of so little
respect that it allows you to watch
porn while engaged in the
parameters of the job? Oh, being
an MP. Also, you’ve heard of the
acronym NSFW? It means “Not
Suitable For Work”, and it’s often
tagged onto texts, messages and
emails that contain off-colour
humour, disturbing imagery or
photos with too much flesh. They
don’t put NSFW on porn, and do
you know why? Because everyone
knows that porn is not suitable
for work!
3 No, really. Don’t watch porn. It’s
not healthy. The medical juriesare still out, but there’s enough
available evidence to suggest an
alteration in brain patterns
among compulsive porn
consumers, increased dependency
issues, addictive behaviour, a rise
in sexually violent ideation and
generally an unspoken awareness,
deep down inside, buried
underneath a bedrock of denial,
that it’s just not cool. There’s
a reason no one ever says, “Sorry
I was late. I was just catching the
end of some porn.” It’s
embarrassing because it’s
embarrassing. Why not go
running instead? Read a book.Play Jenga. Punch yourself in the
face. Anything.
4 If you have to watch porn at
work, don’t watch it in a public
setting. Wow. The mind boggles.
We’re back to basics here, with
porn consumption for beginners.
Hmmm. How to make this clear?
Remember the moving emotional
confrontation in the 1984 Wim
Wenders classic Paris, Texas? Our
hero, played by Harry Dean
Stanton, is in a private booth at
a peep show, bonding with a
stripper, who is also his former
wife, played by Nastassja Kinski.
Stanton’s character is in a private
booth because Kinski’s character
is there to perform a vaguely
pornographic act. This is deemed
worthy of privacy. Hence the
booth. It’s private! There are
no work colleagues around
him! He’s alone! Get it?
5 And if you really, really
have to watch porn at
work, and you really must
watch it in a public setting,
then don’t watch it in
a public setting in the
company of women! The
chances are, and I’m just
guessing here, that the type
of porn you’ll be watching,
irrespective of genre, won’t
exactly be empowering pieces
of filmed entertainment that seek
to explore the nuanced
machinations of the female
psyche. It won’t be Nomadland,
basically (although I suspect
a porn remake, Gonadland, is
somehow inevitable).
6 And most importantly after all
these precautions, if you still
manage to get caught watching
porn at work, in a public setting,
and in the company of women,
whatever you do, don’t blame the
tractors. Yes, they’re sexy. And
God knows I’ve seen a few
Massey Fergusons that’ve made
me drool. But just tell the truth.
You had a moment of weakness.
And you forgot the guidelines.Tony was
the real
party PM
short time, the supreme
leader of people’s
hearts and minds.
I remember the
election win with
incredible clarity. I was
on a flight from London
to Los Angeles, on
a work gig as a
researcher on a TV
show, and when we
landed at LAX the pilot
announced that Tony
Blair had just become
the new PM.
My colleague, a self-
declared Tory hater,
burst out crying withoverwhelming relief.
For me, however, it
simply signalled the
commencement of four
solid years of London-
based decadence and a
giddy embrace of every
Cool Britannia cliché
available — working in
the “meeeeja”, going to
parties with Oasis and
having cocktails with
Irvine Welsh. But then
9/11 happened and
everything went
rubbish.
I notice that Blair
has been waxed andpolished and brought
out by the Labour Party
to speak up for Keir
Starmer and for the
Labour candidates at
the local elections. He
said that the challenge
facing Labour now was
a question of how to
“articulate a forward
agenda for the
country”. Just like he
did? Hmmm. Wonder
what Noel and Liam
are up to? Is Kate Moss
still around? I hear
Downing Street is a
great venue for a party.All hail Lord Tony of
Nineties Nostalgia!
Today is the 25th
anniversary of Blair’s
“New Dawn” — that
fateful day in May 1997
when, after winning
a landslide general
election, he officially
became, for a relatively