Under The Counter loves a good marketing wheeze, so he was tickled by the minor stushie Waitrose has whipped up by launching a bag for life featuring the word ‘tart’ superimposed on an image of a large strawberry. Ooh-er missus. What would Frankie Howerd say?
Tighter than two coats of paint, UTC firmly subscribes to the “why pay for advertising when faux outrage will get you (shopping) bags of free publicity” school of thought. And it’s mission accomplished for the posh supermarket, with dire rumblings about sexual aggression and normalising misogyny plastered all over the media, accompanied by images of the offending bag. (See picture above. Irony intended.)
Predictably, shoppers with a sense of humour are snapping them up. Although, with the bags for life priced at a fiver a pop, Under The Counter is not among their number. Given that the overwhelming majority of his days are behind him, he doesn’t view such extravagant expenditure as good value for money.
Now, on a spectrum of semantic slurs, UTC thinks ‘tart’ lurks somewhere near the bottom (titter ye not), just above ‘crumpet’. And a considerable distance below ‘slag,’ as in Pot Noodle’s infamous and admittedly banned ‘The slag of all snacks’ campaign.
At the end of the day, the bag is a mildly risqué bit of innuendo, and we can all appreciate a decent double entendre – UTC included. He likes nothing better than slipping a big one into SLR at every opportunity.
