Under The Counter has been watching Coronation Street since the soap’s aging lothario Ken Barlow was a fresh-faced angry young man.
Interestingly – with his sullen demeanour, flat cap and milk-bottle specs – UTC also looks a bit like Ken’s dear departed uncle, Albert Tatlock.
But, according to the Auld Boy, there’s a new star gracing the Weatherfield cobbles: the Co-op shopping bag.
Since product placement has been around since 2011, one imagines ITV would have mastered the art of doing it in a subtle and nuanced manner by now.
It appears not. According to UTC’s breathless recollection of a recent gripping episode in which a wet cement fight featured prominently, he clocked a Co-op bag on four separate occasions. And that was before Mrs UTC had talked him into making a cup of tea during the ad break.
This included one shopper inexplicably hung on a glass-panelled door and beautifully backlit. UTC scoffed that the producers must have thought the bag’s partial obscuration by a kitsch apron would transform what was practically a neon sign into a subliminal message.
Scoff he might, but it goes some way to explaining why the Auld Boy always seems to be picking up two pizzas and a four-pack of beer for a fiver these days.
