Northerners turned off by Sainsbury ads

HIS cheeky Essex barrow boy manner and skill at chopping vegetables have brought him riches and fame. But TV chef Jamie Oliver seems to be turning off Sainsbury shoppers in the North.

The supermarket group, which features the Naked Chef in its advertising campaigns, has been clocking up healthy sales increases in the South. But confidential figures show that spending in Sainsbury's northern stores is barely rising at all.

Philip Dorgan, a retail analyst at investment bank West LB Panmure, said: 'All those poncey Jamie Oliver ads do is reinforce the idea in the North that people in London are cocky, have too much money to spend and too much time on their hands.'

Sainsbury has paid the scooter-riding chef £500,000 to star in the series of adverts. Fewer than 20% of the chain's stores are in Scotland and the North. But news that sales are struggling outside its southern heartland will be a worry for Sainsbury, which is at a delicate stage in its recovery.

This week, Sainsbury is expected to unveil half-year profits slightly ahead of the £300m excluding one-off costs recorded a year earlier. After years of trailing rival Tesco, Britain's biggest grocer, Sainsbury has been investing in its stores, product development and marketing.

Industry figures seen by Financial Mail show sales over the quarter to mid-October were up 8.2% in the South-East and South-West compared with 2.8% in the North-West, North-East, Scotland and Yorkshire.

Oliver's commercial was recently named eighth in a list of the most toe-curlingly awful ads of the year by industry magazine Campaign, two places behind Prunella Scales and Jane Horrocks, who star in Tesco's campaign.

Ironically, Sainsbury's much-maligned Value To Shout About campaign starring John Cleese, which was blamed for the earlier downturn in the store's fortunes and the departure of chief executive Dino Adriano, went down well in the North.

A Sainsbury spokeswoman said: 'Everybody loves the Jamie ads - the only people that don't like him are young lads, and they're just jealous.'