Status Anxiety

6 December 2008

In a recession, head for the mall where you can buy seven Crunchies for £1.49

I was awestruck. As a long-term resident of West London, I had been looking forward to my first glimpse of this emporium, but it was even better than I imagined. I simply had no idea shopping centres could be this good. From now on there would be no need to go anywhere else. It was the answer to all my prayers.

I am not talking about Westfield, obviously, but the Oaks Shopping Centre in Acton. The new £3 billion retail park in Shepherd’s Bush may boast a branch of Tiffany, but the Oaks has a branch of Netto, the Danish-owned discount chain where you can buy a two-litre bottle of diet cola for 19p. If you cannot find what you’re looking for in Netto, you can try your luck in Poundstretcher, which offers a 16-piece dinner set for £9.99. It is credit crunch-tastic.

When I first moved to Acton a year ago, I was too snobbish to set foot in the Oaks, dismissing it as a retail substrata that even Kerry Katona would steer clear of. In fact, there is a branch of Iceland in the Oaks, the frozen food chain that Katona’s a spokesperson for. Having combed the aisles of Iceland, I now realise you can ‘party like a celeb’ for next to nothing. £10 will get you 12 mini chicken kievs, 15 crispy duck parcels and a 75-piece Tex Mex combo platter. All you need to is a 70cl bottle of Kasoff vodka to wash it all down (£7.79 from Netto).

The Oaks Shopping Centre is so ridiculously cheap I felt like buying everything in the place, but I soon learnt not to be too hasty. For instance, at first glance the opportunity to buy a bag of five Crunchies for £1.45 in Netto seemed too good to pass up. That works out at 29p per bar, compared to 49p in my local branch of Londis. However, in Iceland you can buy a bag of seven Crunchies for £1.75 and in Poundstretcher you buy seven for £1.49. If there’s a better bargain to be had in Britain, I’d like to know what it is.

My favourite shop is 99p Stores — which, needless to say, is only one store in spite of the ‘s’ on the end. Its motto is ‘quality products under a pound’ and never a truer word was spoken. The most impressive thing is the sheer range of merchandise you can buy for 99p, from a 400g box of lollipops to a ‘fashion’ Santa hat. It is the perfect place to take Ludo, my three-and-a-half-year-old son. Give him a pound to spend and he will literally spend four hours making up his mind. I have never seen him so focused — even when watching Kung Fu Panda. After meticulously examining every product in the shop he nearly always opts for the same thing: a bag of boiled sweets. Not surprising when you consider that it is the size of a sack of potatoes.

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john landaw

December 5th, 2008 2:02pm Report this comment

I at once hot-footed it to my local Iceland, (once I had discovered its locality,) only to discover that though the price was £1.75, this was for 5 and not the 7 Crunchies Toby Young speaks of. My disappointment was not, however, enough, to prevent my purchasing 2 bags

Toby Young

December 5th, 2008 3:09pm Report this comment

I have to confess, in my Iceland it said on a sticker beneath where the Crunchies were on sale that they were offering seven for £1.75, but they were only selling bags of five for that price. My advice is to head to your nearest Poundstretcher.

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