A £16 stereo has come up trumps in a user satisfaction poll. There's no way that's right.

Tesco is insane. Not insane in the "wibble", pants-on-your-head kind of way, but insane like an evil supervillain. Like Google and Microsoft. And Skeletor.

Here's why: first up, it's doing amazingly well in the recession. Thanks to being the place in which every single person in the world buys everything, Tesco has more cash flowing through its massive tills than it knows what to do with. Take a close look at the toilet roll next time you pop to the loo in Tesco - it's made of tenners. The company may as well send its delivery vans directly to the Royal Mint and fill them with money. At least that way it could stop peddling all that annoying food.

Point two: thanks to all this money, it's buying up old dead shops like big, rectangular Pokemon. While the high street steadily collapses under its own bills and the banks retreat to their vaults with a shotgun and a year's supply of tinned beans to protect their perilous reserves, Tesco is using all that free-flowing cash to snap up the husks that remain. Councils once stood in the way of Tesco's plans, ageing jobsworths defending the identity of their changing towns in a very boring but very rational fashion, but now the western world's tripped over its own financial shoelaces, the supermarket chain is waltzing into prime locations because, well, everyone agrees it's better than nothing.

Point three: the Tesco Value stereo has just won a user satisfaction poll. According to Reevoo.com, which is a user reviews website we've only just heard of, the Tesco Value MC-907 CD Micro Hi-Fi came top in the Hi-Fi category. Guess how much it costs. £16.49. Sixteen pounds and forty-nine pence. For a stereo. That's not right.

Do you know why people liked it? Here's one comment: "Bought this for my mum - she didn't want any extra buttons." Brilliant. They probably pre-loaded it with a Westlife CD that she'll never change, which will be as much as she deserves. Another reviewer writes: "All good and perfect for our son." From which we presume their son is three years old, or actually a dog.

Here's the burning question: what the hell is this thing made from? A plastic outer casing and a series of chips and wiring and interconnected parts, precise enough to spin CDS, pick up the radio and pump the resulting noise through a pair of grubby little speakers. That's a stupid amount of technology for £16.49. From which we conclude it must be made from carrier bags and ant dung, in a factory which employs orphaned Korean toddlers with no arms, legs or head. And the factory is under the sea. Right beside the secret lair and the missile silo.