Like meerkats before a storm, the credit crunch is making us behave very strangely. No one’s buying M&S balsamic vinegar any more. Budget stores such as Lidl and Aldi are enjoying booming sales. Tesco Value food is flying off the shelves.

This can’t just be because there are more students polluting the statistics. This must mean that slightly snobby people like me, people who until now have paid £14 for a chicken from the local butcher while trying to ignore the fact that the local butcher is driving a Ferrari, are being forced to buy no-frills.

Forced by their wives.

The conversation in the Rudd household went like this:

Me: “I haven’t eaten no-frills baked beans since university and I don’t intend to start now.”

Her: “Don’t be childish. There’s no difference. You’re a snob.”

Me: “I’m not. I just think there are limits.”

Her: “The only difference between no-frills and normal food is the packaging. You’re just a hopeless victim of marketing.”

Me: “Am not.”

Her: “Are.”

Me: “Am not.”

Her: “Well, if you can taste the difference, we’ll find some other ways to cut costs.”

The day after the stand-off, we have 20 Tesco Value products lined up next to 20 Tesco standard products. And we have a blindfold. I remember the days when we used blindfolds for more enjoyable things, but that was when we were young and carefree and could afford to eat.

First up, bread. The Value version is 37p. The normal stuff is 65p. Both tasted of cardboard, proving her point about marketing and mine about how we should stick with Waitrose. On closer inspection, the only difference: 1.1g of fibre vs 1.3g in every slice. Your colon’s not going to notice.

Orange juice: 88p vs 63p. I thought I’d spotted the difference. One tasted more watery. It turned out to be the non-Value one, dammit. Bottled water: 35p vs 17p: no difference. Chocolate, she won — the Value stuff was actually more edible than the normal stuff — though she refused to sign anything saying she would be happy for me to buy her a 23p bar of chocolate for her next birthday. Hmmm, 23p for 100g though. Maybe I could just change the wrapping.

Honey, I won. The Value stuff is definitely inferior, but it’s half the price so we could always feed it to our two-year-old, what with his unrefined palate. Baked beans, I won. Slimy. Lemonade, she won. Absolutely identical.

I refused to taste either coffee. I might be extraordinarily hen-pecked for someone in just his fifth year of marriage, but there are limits. I need organic, Fairtrade coffee beans rolled on a Cuban woman’s thigh and semi-digested by a member of the South American cat family. Otherwise, it is simply not worth waking up in the morning.

The Value deodorant smelt less girlie than the non-Value stuff, which wasn’t difficult because the latter smelt like a granny’s front porch. Twelve hours later, no discernible pong . . . we called it a draw.

It was close, our bet, but overall I won, for two reasons: alcohol and toilet paper. Just buying the no-frills lager was embarrassing enough. The sales assistant looked at me like I was a tramp, but no self-respecting tramp would touch this stuff. It is frighteningly cheap — 92p for a four pack. The sort of thing that gets Dawn Primarolo, minister of stopping everyone having fun, very angry. But it’s only a miserable 2%. It’s brown water with a vaguely barleyish aftertaste. The standard 4% lager is £2.29 a four-pack, but frankly life’s too short. I shall be sticking with proper beer.

The toilet paper . . . 38p for four rolls. Amazing value if you’re okay with chocolate fingers and a machine-sanded rectum. We aren’t. Not until the mortgage rate changes. Until then, her pointless weekly spa treatment, sorry, really crucial therapeutic massage, will have to go.

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