I JUST went to the shop. I won’t tell you what I went for, this isn’t one of those confessional columns, but the item I bought cost me £1.09.

I tell you what, I’ll let you in on which shop it was. It was the Sainsbury’s Local over the road. My road, not yours. Unless you work with me. I’m going down a cul-de-sac. Not the road. The road isn’t a cul-de-sac. I’m drowning. Help.

So, anyway, I handed over £1.10 from my back pocket. I wouldn’t normally have change there, but there’s a little hole in my front pocket. 

And then time mysteriously slowed down.

For I was caught in the penny trap, the trap we all fall into when we overpay by a penny.

All the permutations ran through my brain. Stay and look like a miser? Or should I walk away nonchalantly? “Cuh!” my action would eloquently state, “I am far too important to stand here waiting for a mere penny. I wear a suit to work, for heaven’s sake.”

But then the fear of the callback clutched at my heart. The dread of the moment when the checkout assistant would say, “Ey, love, you’ve forgotten your change.” And then I would have to skulk back, in front of the queue, to retrieve my dull penny.

I decided to wait. But the checkout assistant was chatting. And painfully slowly she reached into the till, took out the penny and kept it in her hand.

I immediately switched from “imperious penny change avoider” to “tight-fisted penny change hoarder.”

Now I was waiting, waiting in front of a load of people all watching and judging me, waiting for a penny – a unit of currency so small it doesn’t even buy a penny sweet these days, so small I’d need sixty of them just to buy a copy of the Daily Post.

“Why didn’t I hand over a £2 coin, or even £1.20?” I railed at the heavens. “Nobody would bat an eyelid at a man of my bearing and position hanging about a bit for 11p.”

The sadistic checkout assistant finally dropped the hot penny into my hand. “D’ya wanna receipt?”

Did I want a receipt for my £1.09 purchase? (Oh, all right! It was a bottle of Coke.) I have a £2 limit on receipts.

I can’t imagine bringing anything back to the shop for less than £2. It’s not like a bottle of Coke can be corked.

Equally, I can’t imagine going back to the shop and saying, “Can I exchange this? It looked all right in the shop, but when I took it into the daylight it was very lacklustre. Do you have an Irn Bru in this size?”

Aside from that, I didn’t much fancy being handed my receipt first, and then having the penny placed upon the top.

Incidentally, when did shops implement that ridiculous way of handing over change? You know the one. First the assistant hands you your purchase, then she places any notes flat on your hand. Then she piles the loose change on top of the notes. And then she puts the receipt on top of that.

Frankly, if you can get the money into your pocket or purse without dropping a coin after that rigmarole, you should consider a career in the circus.

Perhaps that’s the point. Maybe margins are so tight, the supermarkets count on bits of change rolling under the shelves, ready to be retrieved and banked later.

I don’t know why the supermarket assistants don’t go the whole hog, hand us our change and then tickle us under the arm. 

“No, no, it’s all right,” I said, desperate to get away from the tills and into safety.

I bustled out of the shop, shoving my change into my front pocket.

The penny fell out through the hole and rolled down a grid.

I DON’T like vox pops – where ordinary members of the public are asked their opinion on a topic so that there are some ‘real’ people in the first 10 minutes of the TV news.

This is partly because I always hated having to do them as a reporter. If you want to feel loathed by strangers, without actually being Jedward, then stand in a busy high street with a tape recorder and camera and ask passers-by what they think about education policy.

But it’s mostly because they usually contribute nothing to a story. If I want to hear an ill-informed nutter with no access to the relevant facts ranting on about something, I’ll record myself.

Which is why I’m deeply sceptical of our coalition leaders’ plan to get ordinary members of the public to help them decide where the axe will fall in the economic winter ahead. 

It’s not a hopeless attachment to the over-mighty nanny state to expect an incoming government after many years of opposition to have at least a bit of an idea what they might actually do when back in office, is it?

I don’t think we elect politicians so that they can walk into government then turn around and say, “I say, having a bit of difficulty distinguishing elbow from bottom. Could you possibly…?”

But maybe I’m off the pace here. Maybe this is what the country needs. Perhaps it’s time to say goodbye to experts who’ve spent years studying problems from all the angles before coming up with well-considered plans.

Yes, it’s time for people with no idea of the consequences of a policy to have the whip hand.

I can imagine how this big idea could be applied to other situations. And here I am, imagining it…

A GARAGE. TED THE MECHANIC IS HAVING A LOVELY MUG OF TEA WHILE LISTENING TO THE RADIO. 

ENTER MRS HARTLEY. 

MRS HARTLEY: Excuse me. I’m having a spot of trouble with my car.

TED: You’ve come to the right place. We’re always fixing cars here. Just get it onto the blocks. Lovely. OK, let’s have a look. Hmmm…

MRS HARTLEY: What’s wrong with it?

TED: Looks to me as if the big end has gone.

MRS HARTLEY: Gosh, that sounds fairly major. What are you going to do?

TED: I literally have no idea. Hang on a second. Oi, love!

TED STOPS A PASSER-BY, ELDERLY MRS GRIMSHAW. 

TED: How do I fix this?

ELDERLY MRS GRIMSHAW: Ooo, that looks bad. Is there any of that stuff in it?

MRS HARTLEY: What stuff?

ELDERLY MRS GRIMSHAW: The magic brum-brum fire-water.

TED: Petrol.

MRS HARTLEY: Yes.

ELDERLY MRS GRIMSHAW: It needs more of that magic brum-brum fire-water. Cars need it to go. Just pour it over the engine.

TED POURS SOME PETROL OVER THE ENGINE. 

TED: Still nothing.

ELDERLY MRS GRIMSHAW: If it’s fire-water, it needs fire. Chuck a lighted match in.

MRS HARTLEY: Are you sure about this?

TED: No, it’s bound to make an explosion and kill us all, but Elderly Mrs Grimshaw is a member of the public so I am not responsible for the inevitable carnage.

TED STRIKES MATCH. 

ENDS.

IN THE drudgery custard-filled days of Walter Smith’s Everton reign, the monotonous and insistent drone of the vuvuzela would have provided a welcome spark of excitement.

“Oh, look,” spectators would have said, “Another pinpoint Niclas Alexandersson pass has gone straight into the Bullens Road stand. Still, at least we have this grumbling bee noise to distract us.”

But those were less demanding times. Nowadays, the vuvuzela horn is giving non-South Africans the hump on a massive scale. According to the BBC, 545 people complained to the broadcaster about the noise. 

My sympathy is with the Beeb on this one. Damned if you broadcast the vuvuzela noise, damned if you strip out all the sound from the match and replace it with the soundtrack from a completely different match but which has goals, highlights, fouls and controversial incidents at exactly the same points. As the saying goes.

That doesn’t mean I approve of the din. The big problem for me is the fact that it doesn’t seem to do anything, like Prince Edward. If it’s a constant noise, then it’s meaningless. It’s another method of saying, “I’m at the match,” when a more concise and eloquent way of expressing this thought is by simply being at the match, but I am no expert.

It’s a South African cultural thing. But, historically at least, we bear our own shame. The vuvuzela’s howl is nothing compared with the rattles which British supporters used to swing, now mercifully defunct thanks to health, safety and anti-idiot legislation. Although I was delighted to discover this week that John Lewis is selling football rattles in its toy department. Presumably it also sells spats, jerkins and loon pants in its children’s clothing department.

But there is a place in football for horns and other noise-making devices. And I think they can be used to repair the damage wrought to the game’s reputation by the prima donna alpha males marauding around the pitches of the Premiership.

I am advocating that the kazoo make an appearance in the stands. Imagine the joyous kazoo fanfare that would greet a goal. Obviously, the supporters would have to get together before the match to decide which tune and tempo to use for the fanfare, otherwise there’d be a terrible cacophony.

And there would have to be some sort of conductor who would decide when to start, as it would be dreadful if the kazoo chorus started when, for example, Emile Heskey took a shot which then sailed harmlessly past the post before turning into a beautiful butterfly. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a kazoo player fade into embarrassed silence, but imagine hundreds of them doing it at once. Awful.

But the musical instrument I would most like to see in the stadiums is the swanee whistle. For those not in the know, this is the whistle with a sliding attachment which raises or lowers the pitch. And this would be used whenever there was a foul or missed shot.

This would take the sting out of a two-footed tackle. Instead of the players having a big fight on the pitch and threatening to asphyxiate the referee, they’d all be standing about laughing at the comedy pratfall. Even the poor player rolling about in agony on the grass with a broken leg would have to smile.

And instead of supporters getting irate and shouting abuse at the hapless, for the sake of argument, Emile Heskey, they would be chuckling and demanding that the funny missed shot be repeated on the big screen. “We’re not very good,” one set of supporters would sing. “No, you’re not, but at least we’ve all had a good laugh. Shall we have a pint after the game?” the other set of supporters would reply.

You might think this is an impossible dream, but I’d venture it’s a lot more likely than England winning the World Cup.

I RECENTLY had occasion to visit the Institute of Modern Etiquette. This is a fine organisation which has provided me with the wherewithal to navigate through 21st-century social interaction without which I would no doubt be either shunned, arrested or murdered.

But so much of its work goes unnoticed, so this week I interviewed Simon Flatley, the director of the Institute, to get an insight into its valuable role.

GARY BAINBRIDGE: Why don’t you tell me about the Institute’s history?

SIMON FLATLEY: Well, it became apparent, following developments in sexual politics . . . 

BAINBRIDGE: Sexual politics, heh. Sounds like something Chris Huhne would do.

FLATLEY: . . . .and information technology that the world had changed and etiquette had to change with it.

BAINBRIDGE: What are they doing over there?

FLATLEY: Ah, that’s our IT team. They’re exploring appropriate responses to the news that one’s mother has added oneself as a friend on Facebook. Early findings are that sticking fingers in one’s ears and shouting “No, no, no, please, mum, no!” is ineffective.

BAINBRIDGE: And that one?

FLATLEY: Ah, that’s the middle- class guilt team. They look at the best ways of dealing with tradesmen and the working classes – how many times one has to make a cup of tea for the plumber, how to ask a cleaner to do a task without blushing, that sort of thing.

BAINBRIDGE: And taxis?

FLATLEY: Oh, that’s a sub-section of its own – we’re exploring whether one can get away with rounding one’s tip up to a pound if the meter has only just that second gone to 40p, and what to say when the taxi driver asks one which team one supports.

BAINBRIDGE: And what do you say?

FLATLEY: Early indications are “Cuh! What do you think, mate?” works best. The ‘mate’ is, of course, very important when dealing with the working classes. Also, ‘pal’ and ‘love.’

BAINBRIDGE: Erm, it’s funny you mention football. I’ve got a query of my own. Erm, imagine you work in an office with a load of tellies, a newspaper office, say. And the World Cup’s on all of them.

FLATLEY: Yes?

BAINBRIDGE: But you really want to see Roger Federer playing at Wimbledon. How do you broach that subject, without looking like a weedy big girl’s blouse? Hypothetically speaking, of course.

FLATLEY: Ah, that’s easy. Use this script: “Hey, lads. Venus Williams is on in a sec and she’s completely nude. Well, I say nude, she’s actually wearing an all-in- one body suit which is painted exactly like her body, because she thought that Ann Summers outfit she had the other week wasn’t quite saucy enough. In the meantime, let’s kill time by watching this boring Federer match.”

BAINBRIDGE: That’s genius. Simon Flatley, thank you.

NEWS that an American prisoner was executed by firing squad led to thoughts of last requests. If I were to be killed by firing squad, I would want the man from the Go Compare TV ad to serenade me.

Then, when the squad reloads after shooting him, I could say, “But look what I have delivered unto you.” And the governor would say, “Yeah, fair enough, off you go.”

You might think this is bad taste, but I suggest you take it up with the US Government. I only joke about shooting people dead; they actually do it.