It would seem unfair to lay the blame for the demise of Kwik Save so firmly at the door of John Hutton after just a few hours in the job, but I'm going to anyway, not least because it gets me firmly off the hook. There is something in the deathly pall of my new guvnor's 'personality' that could turn wine sour at 50 paces (more easily done at Kwik Save than at most, mind). So I'm briefing like mad around the drinking dens of Wapping, and it'd be a brave bookie who gave long odds on the Pumster. Not that DRIP's official policy is to shed a tear for Krap Slow. The loyal staff deserve better - let's hope they'll be alright as the rapacious big four circle the cadaver - but let's face it, anything founded by a Welshman is always going to struggle, and the shopping experience never exactly evolved after 1973. I still remember my beloved mother Clytemnestra ordering Danaher (her handyman, driver and toyboy) to step on the gas of the Austin Princess as we drove past. Indeed, as a guide for departmental policy, I take the common-sense approach of checking whatever Janet Street-Porter is saying and adopting the opposite view. To see the overpaid JSP bemoaning the fate of the staff in her wretched column for The Independent serves only to harden the heart. If you had done any shopping there instead of at phoney farmers' markets in Greenwich, Janet, some of your do-gooder readership might have followed suit. Yes, readers, I'm a little bitter this week. My sweet divertissement Candarela has left me for another rising star - a new minister. It would have hurt less if it had been a man. So I'm left to browse the aisles of life's vicissitudes, rummage in the bargain bins of fate and, er, pop down Waitrose for a Microwave Mediterranean Fusion Cajun Mung Bean Coriander and Veal Cous-Cous for one, washed down with a bottle of Chateau Trop Cher - a bargain at £29.99.