Mary Queen Of Charity Shops (BBC2, 9pm); I’m Running Sainsbury’s (C4, 9pm) My Monkey Baby (C4, 10pm).
I AM not sure which is more shocking – women treating monkeys like babies or people who leave condoms and sanitary towels in bags outside charity shops.
It appears that the lunatics have taken over the asylum and the staff are running one of the country’s top supermarkets.
You wait for one documentary to come along and three arrive on the same night.
Two involve shopping, as shopping expert Mary Portas attempts to revive the fortunes of an ailing charity shop and store trainer Becky Craze is given the chance to put her Feed a Family for a Fiver idea on the shelf at Sainsbury’s.
Both are reduced to despair. Becky, 21, because her sausage casserole cobbler doesn’t sell in the quantities that head office demands.
The programme boasts of “ordinary people given real power” although some might see it as getting ideas on the cheap and an hour’s worth of free publicity for the supermarket into the bargain.
Management are giving a variety of shelf stackers, trolley pushers and checkout workers the chance to put their ideas into action. Becky is first, although no one points out that three out of four products fail when launched.
The idea – putting all the ingredients you need for feeding your family on a fiver in one handy-to-pick-up bag – is tried out at Becky’s store in Watford. The manager and other staff all get behind the launch. Unfortunately, the customers don’t, leaving Becky in tears. She’s not used to the realities of business.
EVEN a hardened retail guru like Portas gets downhearted while trying to kick some life into the Save the Children’s charity shop in Orpington.
This is one of the charity’s worst performing stores. She faces two big problems.
One is the staff, a group of mainly elderly volunteers who are set in their ways. The two old dears she nicknames the Toy Twins have been on that counter for 40 years. Area manager Nick too is unwilling to embrace his responsibilities and get organised.
Then there’s the stock. Rather than seeing a donation as giving, people regard it as an opportunity to get rid of their old tat.
Dirty underwear, condoms and sanitary towels have been found among what she sums up as “the crap you get at the end of a car boot sale”.
Portas admits she’s disappointed. At least she has two more episodes to turn the business around.
MY Monkey Baby considers the thousand of people – Americans – who keep monkeys instead of babies. When they say their offspring is a cheeky monkey, they really mean it.
I feel sorry for both the parents, using an animal as a child substitute, and the monkeys themselves. They are condemned to a life of being put in nappies and dressed up like children. Or even having make-up and lipstick – how spooky is that? – applied to their face.
Lori raised six children and, when they left home, suffered from extreme empty nest syndrome. She spent three months in deep depression. The solution was to get a capuchin monkey.
Mary Lynn can’t have children. So she has five monkeys. If one misbehaves, it’s put in a cage, which is the equivalent of a child being made to sit on the naughty step. She’s so concerned about the wellbeing of her children that she employs an animal psychic to read her little boy’s mind.
This leads to a scene with her driving a car with a monkey on her shoulder and a telephone receiver clamped to her ear talking to the monkey shrink.
Doesn’t she know it’s dangerous to use your phone while driving, especially with a furry animal clambering over you.
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