Susan Dalgety: And the winner of the red pepper top shopper award is . . . me

Former Lord Provost Eric Milligan

Mine is clearly still in the post, but I am sure one day I will get the magic envelope which I can then turn down, like my hero David Bowie. When asked why he refused a knighthood in 2003, he said: “I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.”

And local hero, former Lord Provost Eric Milligan, snubbed the then Tory Prime Minister John Major when he offered him a CBE. Milligan said at the time: “The only thing I would accept from the Conservatives is their resignation.”

But while I may have a long, a very long wait for my gong, I did get a rather unexpected accolade from my regular supermarket. Apparently I am the number one buyer of jars of Polish red peppers in Scotland.

“Nobody bought more than you in 2024” said the email that I received last week, which also detailed how much I had saved using my loyalty card – a whopping £329.26.

And my top three purchases for the year were eggs, tinned tomatoes and crisps. Wine is not included in their calculations, I presume because they want to promote responsible drinking – otherwise Malbec would have been number one, two and three on my chart.

This use of data is good fun, but while I was amused at being the nation’s top buyer of red peppers, it did bring home to me how much my supermarket – and all the other retailers whose loyalty cards I use – know about me.

My personal habits are now stored in a giant data centre somewhere, to be called up every time a retailer wants to sell me something. Who needs market research when you can track every purchase?

On balance, I think retailers holding data about me is a good thing. In fact, I would love it if the government produced an app where I could store all my key information from my passport to my medical records.

And why can’t I get my bus pass on my phone? I have a travel wallet ready and waiting.