HAVE you ever tried shopping in a "shop"? If you're not familiar with the concept, it's essentially a building with doors and windows at the front and all sorts of lovely things laid out inside - it could be clothes, it could be cookware, it could be candles, it could be cauliflower cheese - any of which you're allowed to pick up and take home with you to actually keep, so long as you give the nice "shop" people some of your money.

Never likely to catch on, you're thinking? Way too much of a palaver, when you can simply log on at home in your jim-jams, click a button and have the same item brought to your door within 24 hours, the proper old-fashioned way?

Well, that's where you're wrong - at least in the opinion of the people who run the popular retail chain Primark. According to what presenter Kate Quilton tells us in this week's Battle Of The Brands, the Primark folk believe shopping in a "shop" is very much where it's at in 2026.

They love the idea of enticing you into one of these "shops" of theirs (they have loads, they're all over the "shop") so that you can see for yourself all the lovely stuff they have for sale, all of which seems quite bafflingly cheap. Not just see it, in fact, but touch it and even try it on. Apart from the cauliflower cheese, that is. That's because Primark don't sell cauliflower cheese.

You can buy their stuff online if you feel you must, but they don't exactly bust a gut to encourage that, the way their now surprisingly close rivals, John Lewis, do. And if you do buy a Primark thing that way, don't expect them to bring it to your home. You'll have to come and pick it up from one of their branches.

Two reasons. Firstly, delivering to people's doors would be way too costly for them. Their profit margins aren't nearly as big as John Lewis's.

And second, if you come to one of their "shops", you're bound to buy something else while you're there, aren't you? You won't be able to resist. Their fluffy white slippers, for instance, are three quid a pair. Three quid! Seriously!

Molly-Mae Hague, the influencer, raves about those. There's a clip in this show of her doing that on TikTok.

I hope they have my size.

DI Humphrey Goodman clearly gets a lot of satisfaction from his job. Each investigation sets him a challenge he relishes getting his teeth into. Even so, should he really be crying "bravo!" and "excellent!" when he witnesses a poor chap collapsing right in front of him, as happens tonight, in circumstances that suggest someone's done this guy in? I'd have thought not. To be fair, the victim is one of those freaky, gothic-style alternative Morris Dancers, wearing a particularly scary mask, so it's not entirely surprising. Humphrey getting confused, that is. I have nothing against Morris Dancers.

Returning to Fred's restaurant tonight is retired cop Kerry, 56. Kerry's last date there was a damp squib (unlike her starter, which I believe was the damp squib; it's certainly very popular), but at least she won't forget it in a hurry. "It was the worst date I've ever been on in my life," she says. This, of course, sets the bar nice and low for the latest guy they've found for her, 56-year-old tennis coach Andy. Sitting at the bar with a gin, Kerry glances over at Andy when he strides in a few minutes later, resplendent in his natty mirrored shades. And her first impression? "Oh, God..." she mutters.