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How to judge other people's shopping baskets while they're judging yours

SHOPPING late? Judging others by the content of their baskets, while never imagining they’re doing exactly the same to you? This is what you both think: 

Woman With Too Many Yoghurts

Who is she kidding with all those yoghurts? Nobody can eat that many. Either she’s combating a yeast infection the old-fashioned way or she’s trying to look healthy to convince a new boyfriend. Why is she looking at the massive bottle of HP Sauce in my basket? It’ll all get used love, don’t worry about that.

Booze and Tins Bloke

Always one of these, especially early evening: the man who knows what he needs and isn’t f**king about. Three tins of beans, two tins of hot dogs, a white sliced loaf and 12 cans of Carlsberg Export. Legend. Yes, you do make me feel ashamed of the frivolity of the Mississippi Mud Pie in my basket. But you don’t know I live alone so it’s fine.

Pineapple Girl

Wait, she’s got a pineapple? I’ve read about this, sexy Spanish senoritas put those in their trolleys upside down to signal availability. That one’s not upside down, no, and she’s more Barnsley than Barcelona, but still. I’ll put a pineapple in mine. She’s noticed it, there next to the microwave prawn bhuna for one and the Anusol. Is she interested? No.

Bloody Student

Christ, are they back already? First time away from home and they’re kids in sweet shops, loading the basket with red fizzy laces and cans of Monster. No wonder they’ve all got ADHD, staying up all night high on sugar and skunk watching shit movies ironically. What are they laughing at now? Oh, it’s funny that I’m 42 and buying a single potato, is it?

Sad Middle-Aged Bastard

Look at the shopping on this prick, trying to hide his nightly bottle of wine with a few fancy purchases and an exotic fruit he’ll never eat. The truth of it’s there in the bacon, in the cheap cheddar, in the haemorrhoid ointment and lone potato and the big chocolate cake he’ll eat alone, the pathetic, miserable bastard. Oh, that’s my basket.

This week in Mash History: Isambard Kingdom Brunel invents hip hop nomenclature, 1836

ISAMBARD Kingdom Brunel is widely regarded as the father of modern engineering, and the owner of a sick name that goes unnecessarily hard.

But did you know that the icon’s title was in fact chosen by him in order to establish a persona with undeniable street credentials?

Brunel, then known as Barry McCrea, knew that to make it in the dog-eat-dog world of civil engineering, he needed a level of presence the Royal Society could not ignore.

A letter from the engineer to fiancée Mary Horsley in 1832 said: “I pray you, do not get it twisted. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is merely who I am to my fans.

“But the railroaders, the shipbuilders, the bridgemakers would not appreciate plain Barry. For them I put on my stovepipe hat, light my cigar and don my sobriquiet. Then and only then will they put respect on the name of the Notorious IKB.

“There is serious heat on me. Robert Stephenson thinks he can come for the king with his ‘London & Birmingham Railway’, but he’s a nobody. What kind of a name is ‘Robert Stephenson’? Zero swag.

“The Great Western Railway is no more or less than a diss track to my haters, who you know to be considerable. Each one of my broad, 7ft ¼in gauges is a shot fired to these men, and no cap. By the end of my career, I will have created Swindon.”

150 years later, Brunel’s letters made a big impression on rappers trying to make it in equally tough circumstances. To put it simply, game recognised game.

And thus, like their mentor, hip hop stars adopted names like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ghostface Killer, Ski Mask the Slump God, MF Doom and Schoolboy Q in honour of their hero.

Next week: to 1984, when a distraught Michael Jordan realises his talent for basketball condemns him never to realise his dream of designing shoes.

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