How far will you go to bag a bargain?

For me, most recently, it was about ten miles, much of it in heavy traffic. And for what? A bottle of cheap perfume.

I was listening to a consumer programme on Radio 4, upon which a panel of experts was testing perfume. They pitted the costly Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel against Suddenly Madame Glamour, for sale at Lidl for less than £4. The two were hard to tell apart, they concluded.

I delved deeper, on the internet, and found the startling similarity between the two is well known.

My eldest daughter had just bought a bottle of the former at a cost of almost £70, so I drove to Lidl.

Having been on the radio that day, I was convinced it would sell out, so I left in haste and didn’t even think about the rush-hour traffic.

I thought I knew where Lidl was, but 30 minutes later I arrived at the Co-op, where I was informed that Lidl was on the opposite side of town.

An hour later, I had my bargain. With petrol, it probably cost me a few extra pounds and I ended up going a second time, for family and friends keen to get their hands on a bottle.

I’m sure there is some sort of stimulus in our brains that kicks in once we hear the word ‘bargain’, turning us from normal, sensible people to raving lunatics who would break each others’ necks to get their hands on a good deal.

I had the misfortune to pop to Asda at 7.30am on November 29, only to find I couldn’t park. I managed to get a space near some distant bins and walked to the store through a sea of people wheeling trolleys full of widescreen TVs.

I discovered that it was Black Friday, an annual shopping frenzy that has migrated to the UK from America.

The deals create such a stir in the USA that people have died trying to bag them. There is even a website keeping a tally of deaths – seven so far, and 89 injuries – due to Black Friday hysteria.

If the scenes in Asda were anything to go by, that may happen here soon.

One man was virtually spitting blood after failing to secure a rock-bottom-price telly. If he’d got his hands on a marrow from the veg aisle he’d have killed someone.

We are almost brainwashed by the word ‘bargain’. My husband will vouch for the fact that I’ve got ‘bargains’ in the wardrobe at home that I bought years ago – stuff I thought I’d need, or give away as gifts, but never have.

Ironically, I end up taking it to car boot sales and flogging it at knock-down prices to another bargain seeker.