Wednesday 16 February 2011

What if Mary Portas met Jose Arrogante ?

You've got to hand it to Mary “Queen of Shops” Portas and now the “Secret Shopper”(on Channel 4) – she knows her stuff and talks a lot of sense.

In week one she took on the fast clothes retailers and convinced the owner of Pilot to “try something different” (to borrow a line from Sainsburys). I missed the second week where she did battle with the furniture retailers – the like of DFS I guess. I loved what she did at the Angel Fonehouse branch – long overdue is the idea that you should be able to try before you buy a mobile phone !

In week 4 she tackled the Estate Agents and to be honest I was sceptical that she'd be able to pull this one off but yet again I thought she nailed it !

Have I told you about my mate, let's call him Pete, who is an estate agent ? Anyway, I have this great drive to share with others, stuff that I think is good. So I rang him about an hour before the programme went out & suggested he watch it, thinking it might generate some ideas for him.

Myself Pete & his wife, and a few others all met up on Saturday night to celebrate my wife's birthday.

“So Pete – what did you think of the programme? “ I asked.

“ I didn't watch some journalist scapegoating our industry” (or words to that effect was his ill informed reply). I resisted the temptation to explain to him who Mary Portas was.

I persevered “she was saying through the public that basically all estate agents were dishonest Pete. She worked with a particular London agent on drafting property details that were honest and in plain English and avoided terms like a prestigious turning”

Now, did any of you ever watch the fastshow ? In the last series there was a foreign football manager called Jose Arrogante who was based on Mourinho (the then Chelsea Manager)
Mourinho is now doing his own brand of the special one at Real Madrid, but the problem is that there is a new Jose Arrogante and he is called Pete.

In reply he said “The thing is John, i've been in the estate agency business for over 27 years” and to paraphrase him, he can't be taught something by an upstart journalist.

I wonder how the conversation would go if Jose (sorry Pete) met Mary ?

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