TO TESCO, on sufferance. It is late in the day and, over by the sell-by-date section, gangs of starving pensioners fall upon boxes of ready meal lamb shanks like those lions eating the elephant on Planet Earth.

This is a curious place, lit like an intensive care ward and equally determined to provide all that's needed to sustain life. As well as food and drink, there are clothes, household goods and televisions; a post office and a lottery terminal.

Drooling youths prowl the aisles, grateful for the opportunity of minimum wage employment. The Sunshine Bus from the local home makes regular visits, providing lively entertainment for inmates and shoppers.

And there, next to the tills manned by resentful, slack-jawed Pollards, there are collecting tins, asking for spare change on behalf of the mug punters who have "lost" their Christmases due to the Farepak scandal. I am momentarily stunned, then outraged.

Excuse me, but the last time I looked, the Great British Public wasn't to blame for the Farepak collapse. The Great British Public hadn't used that money to shore up other failing companies. The Great British Public hadn't done a runner to their foreign villas with suitcases containing millions of quid. So why should we be asked to bail out the poor mugs who'd fallen for this scam?

Because that's what it was.

In my day, a man used to call at the front door every Friday evening (after the rent man and just before the bloke from the Pru) to collect from my mother the Christmas Club sixpence. Each contribution was scrupulously entered into a little book, which was then kept in a kitchen drawer along with other essential household paperwork like the Green Shield Stamps book and the Co-op divi number.

Then, in early December, there'd be a day of neighbourhood madness when money would be thrown about as if a coachload of drunken Scotsmen had pulled up outside the local shops. Satsumas and chocolate money were bought, along with crackers and a small bottle of sweet sherry for Auntie Mary, who used to occasionally overdo it and then hurl vile abuse about Wallace Simpson during the Queen's Speech.

Sure, we had the occasional scandal. Every five years or so, the Christmas Club treasurer would suddenly go missing in late November only to be found hiding in a Blackpool B&B with a peroxide mill girl called Doris.

It got to the point that minders were appointed around Bonfire Night who would then "accompany" the treasurer every time he left his house. Should the clanking of massed sixpences be heard about his person, he'd be quickly escorted back home to reconsider his behaviour.

It's a shame no one did that for Farepak, but I'm still confused as to why people sent them money in the first place. From my understanding, people didn't earn interest on what they gave to Farepak.

They didn't get cut-rate goods - indeed, the contents of some hampers appeared to cost far more than they would have done at the shops (and how many tins of Olde Oak ham do you want? ). The fabled "High Street shopping vouchers" were just that, only you didn't get change from your £20 voucher for your £18.99 purchase.

All in all, it seems like gross stupidity on the part of the customers. They gained nothing and lost everything. A savings account, a credit card or those savings stamps you can buy in supermarkets would have achieved the same thing without the risk of losing it all.