Rab McNeil’s Week:
Holland & Barrett. It’s the Marks & Sparks of wellness, a fixture on our high streets, into which we might pop with that same feeling that we’re not really going to be convinced by anything in it. But we still come out with something.
It’s the nature of the wellness business, really. You’ve got to have faith. Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Fridman certainly has, with his L1 retail investment outfit acquiring the pill-popping emporium chain for an eye-watering £1.8 billion.
If he’s ever popped into one of the shops himself, he might find himself accosted by one of the green-shirted staff saying: “Eyes watering, sir? We have some drops over here. Are you all right for immersing your head in ice-cold water for three hours? No issues with an irrational fear of drowning?”
The staff are actually pretty good, even if you wish they would sod off. “Can I help you? [Sound of mumbling off]. I’m terribly sorry, I can’t hear you. [Sound of more urgent whispering off]. Oh, syphilis! If you give me the bottle, I’ll just check. [Holds up large black container with skull and crossbones warning symbol and shouts through to back-shop:] “Jessie, is this for syphilis or baldness? Oh, it’s floor-cleaner. Sorry, sir, you must have picked this up by mistake.”
It’s the same when you get to the counter, where they keep a folder of medical advice and information: “[Yelling] Jessie, how do you spell haemorrhoids again?”
Jessie: “Case of the Nobby Stiles, eh? It’s under ‘a’, I think. For arsehole.”
My other issue with H&B is price. Maybe it’s just me, operating as I do on the fringes of the economy – or, to use the technical term, journalism. Certainly, some media reports have characterised the chain as “bargain basement”. Well, that leaves me out of my depth.
For it has always seemed to me that the first thing you need when entering this wellness outlet is a healthy bank balance. Some of the stuff is pretty expensive – though, again, maybe that’s just me, with my ailments inevitably shelved under the section headed “Peculiar”.
It’s true that there are usually special offers. You often get a second batch free, or for a penny. But you’ve got to spend £15 or something before you can spend a penny on a similar item. As far as I can make out, it’s kind of “buy one, get one for next to nothing”. And you think: “Just price the stuff reasonably and shove your weird offers.”
Though some think L1 Retail’s £1.8 billion offer generous, H&B does at least wash its face (in soap-free soap; £15.01 for two bars). Its annual revenues last year exceeded £610 million.
And that’s despite the fact that many decent ratepayers buy mildly embarrassing medical items online now, with no questions asked and the only downside being the postman smirking at the label on your package saying “Knob Enhancement Chemicals Ltd, PO Box X2, Cheam.”
In the meantime, we wish Mr Fridman all the best with his new acquisition. Keep taking the pills chains, buddy.
Pain in the boondocks
The Highlands and Islands continue to traipse in last when it comes to broadband speeds. The latest figures list Orkney, Shetland and Highland as being the worst in Britainshire, which is a pain in the boondocks if you’re trying to run a business in these areas.
Even if you’re just forever on the brink of starvation – or self-employed, to use the jargon (nb does not apply to wealthy tradesmen; you know, those with actually useful skills) – it can make professional life, if not impossible, at least massively irritating.
My antique Macbook is still bandaged like Rab C Nesbitt after I headbutted it during a visit to slow-loading Skye. Bad move: my head is still bandaged too.
Cash still king
The “cashless society” is not the Chancellor’s latest description of the current state of Britain’s coffers but a reference to actual, physical money in the shape of coins and notes.
The ever-progressive Swedes have moved the fastest down this route, but good old Britannia seems happy to beetle along in the slow lane. Cash will remain part of our everyday lives for decades, trumpeted the Bank of England’s chief cashier on the 50th anniversary of the ATM.
In 1967, Reg Varney, out of On The Buses, ceremonially withdrew the first notes from a cash machine in Enfield, North London. I’ve seen a bus defined as a vehicle that goes twice as fast when you run after it as when you sit in it.
At any rate, Reg’s noteworthy bus is still tootling along 50 years later and indeed, like his own number 11 to Cemetery Gates, it seems the cashless society in Britain could be a long time coming.
Roll over puff dog
Sausage rolls news, and a hoo-ha, if not a full-blown hullabaloo, has erupted after a US supermarket chain called Trader Joe’s claimed to have invented what looked suspiciously like the bakery product that we all know and love to eat in the privacy of our garden sheds where, just in from spending a penny at Holland & Barrett, our spouses cannot chide us.
Trader Joe’s has dubbed its product “Puff Dogs” and claimed it is a work of “genius”, which caused apoplexy in our normally reasonable red-top newspapers and on social media, where the nation’s leading psychopaths howl their analysis of events on a regular basis.
If you have a pair of knickers about your person, I wouldn’t bother twisting them over this. For a start, Trader Joe’s Puff Dog better satisfies the Trades Description Act, being as how it is an actual sausage-shaped sausage wrapped in pastry, rather than the flattened, squishy mush that features in the British version.
That said, British bakery chain Greggs sells more than 2.5 million sausage rolls a week. Apart from which, a man in my position could never be seen walking into a baker’s and asking for a Puff Dog. It’s embarrassing enough asking for a Yum-Yum.
I needed a pill after reading this. Really funny. Privileged to sponsor Rab’s column.