Pick ‘n’ mix!!!!!
Not only did Dale Winton teach us how to successfully navigate our way around a supermarket, he also taught us about life. If you work hard and accept help from those around you, it’s entirely possible that you could one day be the proud owner of £2,000 split between yourself and your friend.
We, as a nation, owe a great deal of thanks to this wacky little show. Whether we realised it at the time or not, Supermarket Sweep moulded us into the upstanding citizens that we are today.
Behold the following life lessons you’re likely to have learned thanks to Dale and his quirky little show.
1. People will do fucking anything for £2,000
Regardless of the fact that the show first aired in 1993, the contestants used to lose their collective shit over a measly £2k that was going to have to be shared between two people. These willing morons refused to think twice about humiliating themselves on television to get a slice of that very tiny pie, often getting over excited at the very early stages of the competition, greeting Dale with an ecstatic whimper as the camera panned to their giddy faces.
Honourably, the show bumped up the prize money to £5,000 in later years, probably after the Supermarket Sweep contestants got some sort of a trade union together and demanded a slightly larger prize pool given that they were essentially damaging their reputations beyond repair for the sake of entertainment. Oh how they laughed all the way to the bank to cash their novelty sized cheques. In 2017, a prize pool of £2,000 simply wouldn’t cut the mustard. We’ve become more greedy, but also more savvy in our supermarket visits, so the winnings would need to reflect that. £250,000 seems reasonable.
2. Never bring your fun friend on a gameshow, always bring your smartest friend
Fair enough your pal Greg from work is a good laugh on a night out. He’s always up for a beer and one time he wore his pants inside out for the whole day, even to an important client meeting. Everyone loves him because he’s the right amount of cheeky and stupid, so he gets away with murder. He instantly sprung to mind when you were filling in your Supermarket Sweep application form.
But now you’re on telly and Greg can’t answer a single one of Dale’s incredibly easy riddles. He’s having a laugh and the audience is loving him, but fucking hell Greg, turmeric isn’t a cut of meat. You should’ve brought Nick from accounts, he went to Oxford and once shook hands with the Dalai Lama. Now you owe your Mum £20 for the train journey here and Nick an apology.
3. Hell has a place on Earth, and it’s 100% a supermarket
Supermarkets are horrendous. They’re full of two of the most dangerous things known to man: people and trolleys. There needs to be some kind of seminar on how to successfully operate a trolley before you enter a supermarket because nobody seems to know the correct protocol. Also all trolleys with a wobbly wheel need to be mass executed in some kind of televised sadistic ceremony.
Lest we forget people in this equation, what a bunch of scumbags. People have the outright audacity to go to the supermarket just as frequently as you do, buying up all the stuff you need so there’s none left, taking all the nice carpark spaces and going to the 10 items or less queue with an appalling eleven items. Hell has a name and it’s your local supermarket.
4. Sometimes you have to sit through 17 minutes of shit to get to the good part of something
The premise for Supermarket Sweep was and always will be flawless. However, it’s common knowledge that the best part of the show was when the contestants were allowed to run ragged around the aisles. Respectfully, whatever geniuses decided there should be 17 minutes of quizzing beforehand should be lined up against a wall and pelted with a never-ending supply of water balloons.
Finally, when the iconic dash through the supermarket segment of the show arrives, you get exactly what you bargained for: a very brief hit of hysteria, then it was over. In a way, Supermarket Sweep is a metaphor for life. You wait ages for something exciting to happen, then it comes along and it’s wonderful, then you go straight back to the monotony of everyday life. Banter.
5. Cameramen have the most dangerous job in the world
As Dale quite often joked “there’s a penalty if you knock over the cameraman”. Those brave souls were putting themselves directly in the line of fire by filming what can only be described as a war zone. The contestants would instigate an out and out bloodbath once they reached the battlefield, taking lives left, right and centre for the sake of a costly bumper pack of nappies.
Although unable to locate any evidence on the internet, I vividly remember an episode where a Supermarket Sweep cameraman actually ended up in a contestant’s trolley and she turfed him out quick as a flash which can only have resulted in a bruised coccyx. I hope it was worth it, Anthea. You greedy little bitch. That man spent years getting physio so you could get a measly share of £2,000.
6. You should always wear matching jumpers when you’re going to the supermarket with someone
These folks had it sussed and were miles ahead of everyone else. As a young child, I would regularly go walkabout once we reached the supermarket, resulting in my Mum continuing her shopping blissfully unaware of the very real kidnapping dangers I was in. I’d alert the security personnel and they’d make an announcement over the tannoy to aid my retrieval. Several agonising minutes later, my mother and I would be reunited.
We should’ve paid more attention to the contestants on Supermarket Sweep. Such fools we were. They had it all worked out. They’d wear luminous matching jumpers to spot each other from several thousand miles away, like a beacon in the night signalling a ship to safety. Ne’er a missing persons situation would’ve arisen had we simply paid attention to their gaudy fashion choices and adopted a similar mentality.
Images via ITV
