I listened with interest recently to Lucy Tobin, personal finance editor of the London Evening Standard, talking about her book ‘Ausperity: Live the life you want for less’. It sounds a sensible read, choc-full of money saving ideas. On Radio 4, Tobin trotted through the benefits of moving your credit card balance to a 0% interest card, getting the cheapest deal on energy by signing up online to a dual fuel deal via direct debit, and reducing your energy usage by sticking silver foil sheets on the back of your radiators.

But, given my current quest to reduce the family grocery bills, my ears pricked up at her tip on Tesco Clubcard loyalty points.

Apparently you get 4 points per pound you spend, but they don’t go very far in-store. Tobin’s top tip was to save them up, then go online or ring Tesco’s ‘pointline’, where you can pick up four times the value of the points in vouchers to spend in restaurants and so forth. Marvellous.

But of course, following this sensible advice would not in itself bring down the grocery bill. In fact it might just tempt one to spend more. What’s more, I don’t have a Tesco Clubcard. In fact, I haven’t signed up to a loyalty card since I researched the subject for an article over a decade ago and discovered how much valuable marketing gen the retailers get on card holders.

I vaguely remember using a quote about consumer behaviour along the lines of “when a consumer stops buying Rioja and condoms and starts selecting nappies and milk powder, they are asking to be marketed to.” How naive I was back then. As if buying nappies and Rioja could in any way be mutually exclusive. But I digress…

After a moment’s contemplation – and in view of the uncertainty surrounding the contents of their burgers – I concluded that shopping at Tesco was not the answer. He Who Is Occasionally Listened To suggested I try a local supermarket with an even shorter name in pusuit of cheaper comestibles.

Reader, it was a revelation. This supermarket charges 1980s prices on hundreds of things. I hummed Rick Astley’s ‘never gonna give you up’, while gleefully tossing goods into my trolley. Without going on about it, the Rioja was a complete bargain, and had I been in the market for hard spirits I would have been laughing before I got the lid off the bottle.

Alas, the trip turned out to be a false economy as I simply bought too much food (some of which, like the chicken and ham, oddly enough contrived to taste of nothing at all) and sadly had to bin certain things such as the mineral water, which only comes in packs of 12 bottles. Which leak. And ruin expensive handbags.

So to sum up my experience of Tesco and ASDA in a manner which is of course not remotely contrived: you can fault the horse and water but you can’t fault the drink.