Sometimes, you just get lucky. This week, for example, I arranged an impromptu teambuilding session with three Grade I admin assistants fresh from Minge Central. Sadly, we spent the entire DRIP training budget on the private jet, leaving only enough for a single hotel room, but that’s another story. Suffice to say that while awaiting the return flight I was mildly surprised to see a familiar Lear jet land in Ibiza. 

You could tell there was at least one senior convenience store executive on board because the whining continued long after the engines were cut. The airport gift shop quickly yielded a sombrero and false beard, and thus disguised as a Spanish peasant girl I commandeered a passing donkey and set off in hot pursuit.The limo stopped just a few hundred yards down the road, and in the fading light I spied a few familiar shadowy figures emerge and enter a barn. I spurred Dobbin into a wild headlong amble and pressed my eye to a convenient crack in the wall.

Given the current friskiness of m’learned friends I should not identify the shady crowd assembled within – let’s just say the OFT’s Johnny Fingers would have thought all his many birthdays had come at once. I suppose I should have guessed it. Here before my very eyes the very elite of UK food distribution were plotting all of this autumn’s promotions, bogofs and price campaigns.

At last, the smoking gun! The industry’s most venomous critics vindicated. There’s no price war, it’s all a big conspiracy between retailers and suppliers.

At least, that’s what I think I saw. It had been quite a taxing day under the Mediterranean sun. I was a little surprised that they were all speaking German, which I should say is not a language I have fully mastered. And the bondage gear was a bit unusual, even for the grocery industry. But no matter, my friends at the Daily Mail say it’s plenty proof enough for them.