News from the Labour Party Conference: as secretary of state for education Alan Johnson spoke at the Work Foundation's fringe event he revealed that it was 40 years to the day that he was sacked by Tesco. Amusingly his fellow speaker was Tesco's community and government director David North, who sensibly remained tight-lipped when Johnson demanded answers.

I have no particular allegiances in the epic McCartney split, but have to confess I was really rather amused to read that Heather Mills, aka Lady Mucca, had been chucked out of a Sainsbury's store in Tyne & Wear. Scribblers at The Sun put it down to an enthusiastic employee who had read about Mills' childhood shoplifting experiences in her autobiography. JS itself insisted that it was all fibs and that no-one was turned away from the Washington store. Mills will be relieved to know that Sainsbury's assured me she would be welcome to shop in any of their stores.

One of The Grocer's editorial team recently returned from her honeymoon in Kenya with news that our biggest retailer has acquired superstar status, of sorts, on the African continent. On a beach in Malindi she bumped into a man who ran a curio shop. He was desperate for carrier bags for his shop and was asking all British tourists if they had any. He was particularly keen on getting hold of those from Tesco because, in his words, "the bags are the best".

It's been revealed the American Ryder Cup captain, Tom Lehman took 500lb of corn tortillas with him on the charter flight to Ireland, making the team's departure three hours late. He claimed it "was difficult to find decent Mexican food this side of the Atlantic". This sparked UK tortilla manufacturer Discovery Foods to fly special deliveries of the chips out to Dublin, showing that "whatever the Americans do, we can do just as well".

bogofs.week@william-reed.co.uk


Topics