Let's just take this sorry item, point by point.

1. 8-10 sage leaves, weighing – according to the packet – around 20g. These 8-10 sage leaves are then placed in a plastic tray, in order to protect them from the devastating journey from packing plant to supermarket shelf. Then, to maintain freshness, they're placed inside a plastic bag. Up until now, the previous winner for irritating packaging was undoubtedly the multipack of video cassettes, with layer upon layer of plastic ensuring that you miss taping the first 2 minutes of The Bill. Sainsbury's sage has now eclipsed that, several hundredfold.

2. The price of this sorry amount of fresh herbs is 69p. The Scottish Agricultural College website tells me that farmers can expect to get approximately £170 per tonne of sage. If I popped down to a farm, then I might be able to get around 4 kilos of sage for 69p, after a bit of haggling – actually, here, I'll give you a quid for it. Can't say fairer than that. Because that's a f*ckload of stuffing. In fact, according to The Foody's stuffing recipe, my giant concotion would probably serve 1764 to 2353 people.

3. “As seen on TV”. Sage. A herb. Not a book, or a character actor, or a magazine. A herb. Am I more likely to buy it because it's been on television? One can only assume that Sainsbury's marketing department have done extensive research to suggest that the credulous British public do, in fact, believe that something is a more worthy purchase if it has that ludicrous sticker on it. In the weeks prior to the Big Sage Rebrand, researchers will have been loitering in the aisles of suburban supermarkets, noticing bored housewives nudging each other and pointing to the herb section. “Moira. Psst. Moira. See that herb? It's the herb off the telly. Yes, yes, I'm sure. Look, only 69p, too. 8-10 leaves, apparently. I'm going to buy some.”

4. Probably the only saving grace is that they've removed Jamie Oliver's fat head from the packaging, along with the face-clawing quote about him being “doolally about herbs”. I'm becoming doolally about herbs myself, and for all the wrong reasons. I beg you all, please, go to a greengrocer. If you buy the above product, you are an imbecile.