Harry Potter and the Night of Zombie Lesbian Soccer Highlights 2009 Flaming Sword X

I was watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before and it occurred to me; the whole "franchise" has turned into the cinematic equivalent of a parish production of Bugsy Malone. Indeed, the feeling that JK Rowling's books have been transformed from masterpieces into the All Saints' Amateur Thespian Society's next sell-out performance is accentuated by the ownership that the mainstream media now claims over it; its not a film anymore, it's a British film. That means we should all support it because it is produced by Pinewood studios or stars Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, and therefore has the moral high ground. Child actors, cheesy morals and a man with a beard who dies at the end (yeah, I'm comparing Dumbledore to Jesus, essentially making Jesus gay. You got a problem with that, Jan Moir?), it's got all the ingredients of a second-rate period drama. The sort of thing that gets shown on ITV4 on Boxing Day. Thing is, as a child I read and cherished the original books; I've still got the whole set on my bookcase, next to the Artemis Fowl trilogy and the first six Alex Rider books. But since most books that get turned into films end up losing all trace of the charm and wonder they once held (the exception being Lord of the Rings and Children of Men), I was always doomed to hate Daniel Radcliffe with a biblical vengeance. And when I say biblical, I mean I want an angelic horde to charge from the sky and deliver righteous, Old Testament-style justice on that pathetic excuse for an actor.

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Supermarkets, eh? As much as I feel loyal to Tesco, it really is man-hell. I was there to help mum with the shopping on Friday and I basically saw first-hand the three castes in supermarket society.

Firstly, the mothers. They know where everything is, even when all the aisles just got rearranged; it's a female sixth sense - know how The Stig always faces magnetic north? Well women always face towards the checkout tills. I think they must have some batlike sonar system implanted from conception in their brains so that they can navigate in a shop. Of course, once they're outside they are useless. My mum couldn't find the car in the carpark (it was 100 metres away from the exit - straight forward!), but this is also backed up by the fact that they can't read maps whatsoever.

Then there's the grandmas. Often accompanied by their married-away daughters, they lurch around the aisles, face thrust forward to increase vision, repeating past conversations and forgetting to switch their hearing-aids on. They lick their teeth and ponder for hours at the rotissery counter, deciding precisely which slice of crumbed Wiltshire ham is the best and cheapest. Tesco ain't Liddl so you see a better class of nana there, but it's all the same. "78p for a loaf of bread? You young 'uns don't know anything today! My mother taught me to hunt, kill and tin my dinner - nowadays you can't buy anything that isn't frozen!!! Back in my day you had to dance for your food!" et cetera et cetera.

Finally, the men. A mixture of husbands and bachelors, they invariably walk around in a bewildered state of shock. I saw one poor soul standing dazed and confused in the frozen meat section with just a bottle of Abbot's Ale and a lipstick. The little tyke didn't even have a trolley - he didn't stand a chance. These unloved blokes are usually victims of neglect; their hearltess wives give them a list and a postcode for the Satnav and push them on their way, without a word of warning or a care in the world. What you ladies don't understand is that the multitude of foods, of packaging, of instructions - it's all foreign to a male mind, which is kept stimulated usually on a diet of beer, Dave and football punditry. But here, in the vast wasteland of Tesco, the brutal reality of Asda, or the unforgiving wilderness of Sainsbury's, we are lost. Cut off from the Matix and sent out alone into a world of buy-one-get-one-free deals and clubcard points, we can't survive for long. We haven't been taught the ancient art of packing bags so that the vegetables and the raw meat don't collide, or that bread should always go on top so that it remains unsquashed.

Some stores we can cope with - Blockbuster or BNQ, for example. But that's because those are man-friendly environments, nature-reserves to ease us into the terrifying reality of exchanging money in return for goods and/or services. They have entire sections devoted to paint, or screwdrivers - and aisles of films with names like "The Night of Zombie Lesbian Soccer Highlights 2009 Flaming Sword X" (I tried to sum up the gist of every man-orientated film ever. In this one, Silvester Stallone stars as an ex-marine dropped into Iraq, armed with only a rolled-up copy of The Sun, to rescue a beautiful Eastern European singer from dastardly Argentinian Neo-Nazicommunist guerillas who happen to be brilliant footballers). There are a few men - proper city-slickers who look great in suits - foodies - but they already know to go to Waitrose, where everything is simple, organic and expensive. There, you don't have to think about finding a bargain because there simply aren't any.

This lack of supermarket-awareness is what makes men flawed. If we had a head for multitasking, then the world would probably be perfect. Probably.

I feel weirdly loyal to certain brands. Tesco, Twinings, Orange, the BBC and Trident, as well as Masterfoods (the company that produces Milky Way, Mars, Galaxy, and Magic Stars) I won't betray. This has and will continue to lead me down the crazy-paved garden path to financial ruin but for some deep psychological reason locked in the core of my mind, they taste better. I think it's linked to that effect you get when you pay more for a fancy meal. It just tastes better. Your pounds are working to make your tastebuds feel upmarket, and they're doing a good job. So I will continue to munch on Penguins instead of Tesco Chocolate Sandwich biscuits, and carry on smothering Philadaelphia Spread on my sandwiches instead of using the own-brand Soft Cheese Spread. And why? Because I'm cool.