SO, last week was “Black Friday”. Well, it wasn’t, as it turns out, and it never has been – and it never will be in this house.

Basically, a few stores did a few discounts.

(Memo to the whole of Western civilisation: Shops do this occasionally.)

But these days we love to give things a label, which is why Black Friday was swiftly followed by “Cyber Monday”.

Oh, do me a big one!

The next thing you know, people are on the six o’clock news stabbing each over a big telly.

It’s a marketing gimmick and many of the great British public fell for it hook, line and overdraft.

Yep, Black Friday will leave many feeling blue and possibly in the red. Some of the footage was reminiscent of an aid drop in a Third World country.

Except instead of water or grain, the outstretched hands are desperately appealing for the latest techno-gizmo with an aspirational logo on it.

Matty, the sinewy joiner from next door, told me that he called in at Kendal Asda at half seven in the morning to pick up his sandwich for lunch and found a long queue of consumers stretching from the front doors of the store.

When he eventually got inside, all the sandwiches had been barricaded off and, instead, special aisles had been created to herd fevered shoppers to all the electronics where there were (some marginal) discounts.

When Matty tried to undo the barriers to get to the butties, a watchful security guard asked what he was doing.

Matty, whose stare has been scientifically proven to kill a horse, replied: “Trying to get a chuffing sandwich mate!”

In an act of defiance, Matty undid the sandwich security cordon only to find when he turns around that said security guard has locked it up again.

Presumably for Matty’s own protection from the consumerist hordes.

“I could understand it all,” Matty tells me, “if they were selling 50-inch TVs for £50, but they’re not.”

Good job, there’d be riots!

And the moral of this story is? Always make your own sarnies!

I purposely spent as little money as possible on Friday when everyone started talking up Black Friday like it had been around for years.

I’ve heard of “Black Eye Friday”, which is a quaint Cumbrian tradition to be undertaken on the last Friday before Christmas.

This involves having a couple of drinks with work colleagues and then at some point later in the proceedings becoming hostile towards random passersby and accusing them of staring at your pint/bird/bloke/kebab.

“I’m not as drink as you thunk I am, officer!”

There was a time when the English regarded anything American with a smirking, patronising indifference – not any more.

We are the 51st state now. Part of the good old United States of Embarrassment.

Black Friday also demonstrates the terrifying mobilisation of social media –that frothing, reactionary kangaroo court of justice, ethics and morality.

Even those longstanding contributors to the great British tax system, the Luxembourg-based Amazon, racked up its busiest day ever, selling 5.5 million units, or 64 a second.

Capitalism, your work here is done?