Clik here to view.
Businesses which are reluctant to reduce prices will learn the hard way
✒ There may be a recession, but some people evidently haven't heard. London taxis are probably the most expensive in Europe, but you still see scores of them parked near Victoria station, forming an almost endless snake around the side streets, all praying that chance deals them the ride to a distant suburb and not round the corner to Pimlico.
Of course, if they reduced their tarrifs there wouldn't be anything like the problem. But they can't because the mayor's office sets the fares, which date back to the good old days when people waved for a cab as casually as they would swat at a fly. And taxi drivers do tend to believe that their prices can never, ever come down.
Lots of restaurants are almost empty these days, especially early in the week. Occasionally I want to say: "Look, you're charging £8 for a bit of smoked mackerel and white gunk, and £17 for a pork chop with mashed potato. Oh, and your markup on the wine looks like 300% to me. Do you sometimes wonder why we are the only two people here?"
Some companies have spotted the bad news. It seems to be a rare clothes shop that hasn't got a sale on and charity shops are booming.
But many organisations tend to believe that their prices are as immutable as the Ten Commandments – unless they're being revised upwards, that is. They will learn the hard way.
✒ A visit to the Cartoon Museum always cheers me up. This week the London venue launched its new exhibition, drawings on the topic of marriage, with contributions ranging from William Hogarth to Steve Bell – thanks to both of them for lending the material. Way to go, guys!
If you go, you'll have your own favourites – possibly Posy's toe-curlingly precise dissections of middle-class marriage. For what it's worth, I liked Roz Asquith's scene at a will reading. The solicitor intones: "And finally to Edna, my ex-wife of 40 years, whom I promised to mention in my will, 'Hello, Edna!'"
Or Martin Honeysett's grisly depiction of a fat, slatternly woman watching TV while surrounded by a mess of ashtrays, empty beer cans and fast food boxes. Her husband is saying: "I think the money you spend on that lifestyle guru is wasted."
✒ Ron Collins, who has just died, was one of Britain's leading admen, a home-grown version of the Mad Men on TV. Years ago I spent a day at his agency, reporting every detail of its work.
The best bit was his attempt to sell Scotch brand video tape. He'd come up with the idea of a jokey skeleton watching sport on the box long after he'd died. The point being that the tape could be used indefinitely.
There was a hitch. "The client thinks the skeleton is rather morbid," someone said. "Of course he's morbid, he's dead," said Ron. They decided to make him look cosier by giving him a hat, slippers and a pipe. "But what will happen to the smoke?" the client asked. "Won't it come out through his ribs?"
Ron told me about the unique selling proposition: that Scotch tape lasted for ever. In fact, all video tape lasted for ever; it's just that nobody had thought to grab the fact for themselves. And thanks to the ad, Scotch went on to become the bestselling brand in Britain. The truth, but not quite the whole truth.
✒ The death of Elizabeth Taylor reminded me of the days when it was the Guardian, not the Sun, that dealt in terrible puns. For example, once a Crystal Palace footballer called Gerry Queen had got into a fight during a match. Our headline was "Queen in brawl at Palace". When the hugely hyped Burton-Taylor Cleopatra was released, it got terrible reviews. The Guardian called it "The biggest asp disaster in the world."
✒ More crazy labels: Dr Alison Rimmer sends me a leaflet from an antidepressant called Citalopram. It warns: "Check with your doctor if you suffer from any type of mental illness, such as depression."
Andy Strouthouse found birdseed on Sainsbury's website. "Dietary information: contains nuts." For allergic chaffinches, one assumes. Seamus Finnegan bought some Co-op children's toothpaste. The tube is marked: "Keep away from children."
Last week I mentioned the extraordinary Spanish recipe, in a sort of English, that appeared in a Sainsbury's leaflet – including "bonfire of the grudges", and "slip the pretties". Several readers have written in to say that this must be a translation from the internet: "escamas" can mean either grudges or fish scales. "Bonito" means either pretty or a tuna-like fish. Escurrir means either to slip or to drain.
An anonymous reader wittily applied the same technique to a Jamie Oliver recipe, putting it into Spanish, then back into English, via Babelfish. It seems to be for a leek soup: "It slices rough the carrots … cuartéelo underneath the running water, and cortelos in ¼ — advance to little the slices … it cooks around 10 minutes with the oblique cover … it adds broth of boiling to the vehicle soup, a good one for stir, and traigalo for boiling." I wonder how the Spanish translate "pukka"?