subscribe
/ Sign Out

'Ripe and ready' avocados, and other huge f**king lies told by supermarkets

HAVE you purchased an avocado you thought would be perfect but is hard as a diamond when you open the packet? You’ve probably fallen for these other supermarket lies too.

Fresh living basil pot

Ooh, lovely, you think, a nice pot of basil that you can pop on the windowsill and water, plucking fresh green leaves off to add to dishes throughout the coming weeks. Sadly the reality is that it turns black and shrivelled within seven hours of arriving at your home, so you bin it, along with your dreams of freshly made pesto.

Ripen at home plums

Allowing these to ripen at home seems like an excellent idea. You’ll enjoy eating them at the weekend. However, the weekend comes and goes without these tough little bastards softening even slightly. Then you come home from work one day and they’re mush. What the f**k happened during the eight hours you were out? A total mystery.

Soft French baguette

As you take it from the shelf, you can imagine yourself at breakfast tomorrow, slathering butter on this pillowy soft bread. However, by the time you get to it the following morning it’s become so hard that you could use it to knock out an assailant if necessary. You put it back in the bread bin only to find it’s gone mouldy three hours later. They’d be rioting about this nonsense in Paris.

‘Fully loaded’ pizza

Looking through the cellophane window on the box, this pizza certainly looks like it has been abundantly topped with mozzarella slices, peppers, ham and mushrooms. But when you open it ready for cooking you discover that this is the only fully loaded part and the rest of it has a smear of tomato sauce and thin scattering of cheddar. You spread out the toppings, and it still looks sad.

‘Ripe and ready’ avocados

The biggest supermarket con of all. You don’t bother squeezing them to check their ripeness, as it is very clearly stated on the packaging that they are fit for eating immediately. However, when you attempt to cut one open at home, it’s harder than titanium and unlikely to be anywhere near ready this side of Christmas. It won’t stop you buying them again though. Idiot.

Seven songs we really don't need any more f**king covers of

SOME songs have been resurrected more times than the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. And much like the films, every new iteration is somehow shitter than the one before.

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen himself once admitted that too many people have covered this song. Each new warbling, saccharine, X Factor-style version leads us further from the original and deeper into musical Hell, where Star Trekkin’ and Grandad are on a permanent loop.

Imagine

Even before the criminally bad star-studded pandemic rendition, every John, Paul and Ringo had tried their hand at this song, transforming a once-moving plea for world peace into a bog-standard ‘nice tune’ that’s on one of your auntie’s Military Wives Choir CDs with no hint of irony.

Just Can’t Get Enough

The Saturdays wisely just copied this Depeche Mode hit which doesn’t lend itself to non-electronic interpretations, as the bossa nova version proves. Now there’s a veeery slooow advert-friendly acoustic version that defeats the point of it being catchy synth-pop in the first place, like playing Immigrant Song on a child’s xylophone. Well done, everyone.

Over The Rainbow

Since Judy Garland first sang it in The Wizard of Oz, Over The Rainbow has been murdered hundreds of times over, by serial cover version offenders like Cliff Richard and, probably most famously, that big Hawaiian bloke with the ukulele. We probably could have stopped after him. Or after Judy, frankly.

All Along the Watchtower

You’d think lesser artists would actively avoid a Bob Dylan track made famous by Hendrix. Plus Neil Young did it too, so how many versions do we actually need? A disco version, perhaps? However the many notable cover versions didn’t deter U2. That’s why true music lovers only listen to ‘the definitive Bono version’.

What A Wonderful World

No one has done a better version of this song than Louis Armstrong, but that doesn’t stop millions of YouTubers and even Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson from trying their hand at it. Our only hope is that the upcoming mass devastation caused by the climate crisis will stop people covering it. Every cloud, etc.

Valerie

It was originally by The Zutons and Amy Winehouse covered it and that was great – but we don’t need any f**king more versions. Your cousin’s mate’s band that did a wedding once certainly do not need to show us what a reggae-infused rendition would sound like, and we’re not just saying that because they’re white and from Nuneaton. Although it doesn’t help.

Next story ›