I read the other day that for some women “bagging a bargain is better than sex”. Really? Let’s have a think about that. I suppose if the man heaving about on top of you after a major nose-picking session is John McCririck then, yes – getting a £20 frock at Karen Millen would inch ahead as the more pleasurable experience. But if the chap in question was, say, Zinedine Zidane in full France strip, then any woman who thinks she would have a better time at the M&S sale should, with all due respect, think about chucking herself off a bridge.

You see it’s all about context. Which is why the lust-filled faces of shoppers who recently stampeded a new Primark store in London, knocking babies aside because they’d heard that everything was going for a quid were so baffling. I know Primark customers aren’t generally rich but, hell, even at full price, a vest is only £2. When prices are this low, surely there’s a limit to how excited you can get by them dropping fractionally lower? What would the crowd have done if they’d heard everything was going for 50p? Had a mass, multiple orgasm?

I’m starting, as a regular Primark customer, to feel uneasy about our limitless desire for cheap clothes. I read about this stampede while on holiday in Portugal and snorted with derision. Then I glanced down and realised the Primark bikini I was wearing cost less than half my poolside cocktail (yes, yes, I’m common). That can’t be right, can it? Some poor woman in a Bangladesh sweatshop toils for pennies so that I can drink my body weight in Slippery Nipples.

I don’t wish to spoil your Saturday, but War on Want conducted a survey into Bangladesh factory workers who supply retailers such as Tesco, Primark and Asda, and found that to make our throwaway wardrobes many people work up to 18 hours a day for 5p an hour (the retailers have all denied the allegation). I think we can assume that these jobs don’t offer much of a pension scheme. But should we boycott cheap clothing retailers and forgo our “better than sex” bargains? War on Want say no: the workers desperately need these jobs. The answer lies in we, the customers, letting the big chains know that we want to see working conditions improved, and for the Government to regulate the industry.

I have another idea. Since it is now compulsory for food manufacturers to declare how much fat/salt/crap is in their product, why don’t we extend the principle to clothes? Each item could bear a non-removable label revealing how much the poor sod who made it got paid. Your £12 replica Gucci jacket might sit a little less comfortably on your shoulders if you knew inside was a tag stating that the 18-year-old machinist had earned 3.4p.

Shame labelling – I can see it catching on. And if it does, just remember that it was my idea, so the money’s all mine, mine, mine.

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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