The Mary Whitehouse of South Manchester

I'm feeling a bit miffed today for all the wrong reasons.

On Tuesday, while shopping in Sainsbury’s, Fallowfield I was browsing the magazine racks, wondering if I could justify the huge expense of another glossy cookery magazine when I noticed the cover of something a bit less salubrious.

There is a range of magazines such as ‘Close Up’, ‘Real people’ and ‘That’s Life’ which seem to be proliferating on the racks of newsagents and supermarkets.   These publications specialise in illustrated  tales of B list celebrities’ broken relationships and/or physical deterioration and lurid real-life stories from characters straight out of the Jerry Springer Show.  Sex, drug-taking, betrayal and medical horrors are all grist to the headline writers’ mill.

I don’t usually take much notice of these.  I think of them as the modern day equivalent of ‘Tit Bits’, a weekly magazine my mother used to get when I was young and which specialised in often sensational human interest stories.

The cover which caught my eye was from ‘Love It!’ and the headlines promised seventy-two pence worth of the most appalling violent misogyny, rape, child abuse and animal suffering.  It just seemed to take the whole genre a step too far.  Still, I supposed I was just an intolerant old fart and abusive horrors weren’t on my shopping list so I pottered off to the more wholesome toiletries section.

The magazine preyed on my mind though.  Surely it was just too unpleasant to have on low level shelves in a family shop.  Too unpleasant to have on show anywhere really.  In fact, the old ‘girlie’ mags were less offensive than this and they weren’t allowed near Sainsbury’s.

The Guilty Publication

That night, lying in bed, I resolved to stand up and be counted.  I would go back to Sainsbury’s, take a photo of the magazine shelf and a close up of ‘Love It!’s’ front cover and expose its unsuitability on Twitter.  Ha!  I would fight for the rights of shoppers to go about their business without being made to think upsetting thoughts.  Dozing off I plotted how I would tag in my MP and all the Fallowfield councillors, leading to people everywhere demonstrating against 'Love It!'.

Next morning, cloaked in righteousness, I scurried up to Sainsbury’s magazine stand to carry out my good work.  Where was ‘Love It!’?   The ten or so ‘Love It!’ mags had gone!  ‘Chat’ was there, ‘Take a Break’  was  there, both trumpeting tales of human misery but mere handmaidens to ‘Love It!’s savage offers.

There were only two possibilities.  One that about ten people had come through Sainsbury’s in the last ten hours it was open and each had gladly paid seventy-two pence for the opportunity to slaver over some human and possibly animal’s suffering. (As for the animal it would depend whether or not the tumble drier was switched on).

The second and most likely possibility was that someone had the same thoughts as me and had complained.  Fallowfield Sainsbury’s has a massive number of student customers.  Everyone knows that modern students are prone to having weak turns in response to ‘triggers’ which might indicate any type of unwoke activity.  Well, the activities catalogued in ‘Love It!’ would certainly qualify as extremely unwoke.

I asked the assistant nearby but she had no idea what I was talking about and, as it was early, there were none of the regular staff around so I never found out the answer.  I should have been pleased that the magazines had been removed but, at that stage, I felt more miffed that my campaign had been thwarted.  On thinking about writing this little blog I had to go to Burnage Tesco’s to find another magazine rack containing ‘Love It!’ for some illustrations.  There’s no point in complaining there though as it doesn’t seem right if it isn’t my regular shopping haunt.

I can finish on a small but significant high.  Today, amongst my emails I saw one that said, ‘Please help us to improve your shopping experience. Tell us how your visit to Sainsbury’s was on Tuesday’.  Yes!

Dear Sainsbury’s ...........