Any Old Irons Going On The Cheap?

Picture the scene. Harrods announce their annual sale. It's advertised on the TV. Eva Herzigova is booked to cut the ribbon. All leave for staff is cancelled in anticipation of the screaming, jostling hordes pressing through the doors as soon as they are thrown open.

But then everybody realises that Harrods isn't all that: the china is cracked; the clothes are out of fashion; the handbags are cheap imitations of the real thing; less Dolce and Gabbana and more Dyer and Gabbidon.

The doors are thrown open and...nothing. Nobody. Tumbleweed blows across the sales floor. The perfume assistants look nervously at each other through their painted smiles; the store manager checks his watch but it's stopped. Like the handbags, it is a Thai imitation. A crisp packet blows in through the door, skips across the floor and settles at the feet of the manager - Tesco Value Cheese and Onion.

"What the imitation fcuk?" the Qatari sheik demands, "What am I going to do with all this crap if nobody wants to buy it?"

Just then, a bedraggled middle aged woman walks sheepishly through the door wearing a crepe hat and a woolly coat. She looks around nervously and asks in a Northern working class accent, "Anything going cheap that I could take back up to Stoke with me?"