I was walking around Marks and Spencer in Newcastle yesterday with my parents just to kill time before going for dim sum at Happiness Inn and was milling around the fruit section. It is more eye-watering than mouth-watering. £9 for a basic fruit salad. It was a fairly large plastic container but it didn't contain nothing more exotic than some apples, grapes and melon. Now if it had guava, dragon fruit, mango, rose apples, mangosteen or lychees then I might think differently.

Now Lidl, they do fruit and veg at fantastic value and quality. Don't let those large M&S American strawberries fool you, you know they are just all glamour and no taste.

Prague is renowned for its great beer and great prices. What does drive me nuts is the places that start to take the p*ss when it comes to prices creeping up to the ridiculous.

Anything less than 30kc for a half litre beer is a bargain and probably a traditional local bar.

Up to about 50kc is still OK, especially if you have come from the UK, but those prices will reflect a more upmarket establishment and probably something closer to the town centre.

Around 90kc and you are definitely in a tourist trap or a modern hotel. 

At 133kc, bloody hell, you must be at the airport! How ridiculous. When I was there a couple of years back it was 90kc.

My friend actually found a student place that was selling at 19kc in town. 

Just watched the programme with Sue Perkins and Giles Coren called Edwardian Supersize Me on BBC . These two people just ate loads. Typically it was over 5000 calories per day compare to what we know as a sensible level of 1800 per day.

Just watching them scoff down all that food during breakfast, lunch and dinner made me feel sick. There was never just one of two dishes, it was always a full on banquet going on even for breakfast which could include pork chops thrown in.

The amount of money that was spent by the upper classes on their excesses were amazing. Having a melon each would have cost the equivalent of £80 per person although in Japan some things still do cost just as much!

That Sue Perkins was supposedly a semi-vegetarian as well. Their burps must have stunk.