Episode 20 Inside Out

Good evening.

Tonight on Inside Out, we go undercover at Britain's

biggest supermarket, Tesco.

And we go in search of gold in one of the unlikeliest of places.

Welcome to Inside Out, I'm Paul Hudson.

Tonight, we are investigating Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket,

where some special offers aren't always that special after all.

It's just on the Angel Delight, mate.

They are on offer for three for ?1.

Also tonight, the artist hiding real treasure

in the unlikeliest of places.

There we go, look at that.

Solid gold.

I wonder who's going to find it?

And later in the programme, top archaeological finds

here in the Yorkshire Wolds.

You can see he's got quite a wide rood here,

and that's probably something like an axe.

Now, how often do you check your receipt when you shop at Tesco?

We all take for granted the price we see on the shelf

is what we pay at the till, but what if it's not?

Well, Jonathan Gibson has been investigating

the not-so-special offers at Britain's biggest supermarket.

Who's up for a good deal?

I am!

I'm a sucker for a special offer!

Most of us are.

And Tesco knows it, too.

That's why the shelves at Britain's biggest supermarket

are full of special offers - money off this, buy two for that,

you get the drift, and we all take it for granted that the price we see

on the shelf is the price we'll pay at the till - right?!

But what if things don't quite add up when you get home

and unpack your shopping?

I've just bought a few bits at Tesco and I'm sure these products

were on special offer - that's why I've bought two of each -

but according to my receipt I've paid full price!

And that's the point.

I've paid 60% more than the deal on the shelf.

That's ?3.30 in hard cash.

At another Tesco store, I spot 2 for ?2.00 on ice cream.

But at the till, it's the full price as well, so what's going on?

Ice cream, Martin?

Martin works for Trading Standards and says the law

on pricing is simple.

They must put a price on goods so you know what you're going to pay

and that price must be accurate so you don't get charged

more than you thought you were going to pay.

Sounds simple enough and with more than 3,500 stores nationwide,

Tesco should be getting it right.

But is it?

That's what I want to find out so armed with my phone and some

secret cameras I want to see how many offers on the shelves don't go

through at the checkout, and here in Leeds I'm finding problems.

Have we shortchanged you?

How much by?

Yeah, just on the Angel Delight, mate.

They're on offer for 3 for ?1.

After checking the price on the shelf he asks his colleague

to refund the difference.

This seems to happen quite a lot, is it just me?

Nah.

But neither of the staff remove the out-of-date label so,

when my colleague returns a few hours later, we're

overcharged again.

And that's the problem.

Multi-buy deals are being left on the shelves after the tills have

been told they've ended.

This offer is almost a month out of date and it's not

the only out-of-date label!

I've just bought some batteries and on the shelf they're 2 for ?5

but they haven't come off.

At this Tesco superstore on the outskirts of Leeds,

a worker checks the label but he doesn't spot

the label's out of date.

It should have been removed five days ago.

It's the right barcode.

And on we go.

I've started making a list of how many offers are wrong in how many

places and I want to know if what's happening in Yorkshire is also

happening across the country.

Because, if it is, it's not just a problem for Tesco,

it's a problem for Tesco customers.

Have we robbed you?

Just on the Chicken Tonight.

At this Tesco store in Liverpool, sauce marked ?1 on the shelf

is almost double at the checkout.

It says on the shelf ?1 and it's coming up ?1.79.

We've all got kids.

The kids need feeding.

Is that right?

That's what it is.

Thanks very much.

And at another store nearby, I'm left completely confused

by the offers on the shelves and what I'm charged

at the checkout.

In fact, there's so much difference between the shelf price

and the receipt price, I'm not even going to bother

to go back and try to get what I'm owed returned.

Completely ridiculous!

If there are just too many offers changing too frequently so that

store staff can't really be expected to understand them, comply

with all the changes, then that is something that Tesco

head office needs to think about.

And there's plenty to think about when I head back to Leeds.

Hi, I've just bought this bag full of shopping.

All those things are on offer but none of it's come off.

Do you want to deal with these?

I knew I shouldn't have been standing here!

The person who does this job did leave so we've been waiting

for the new person to come.

Doing now what somebody should have done hours, days, weeks ago.

That's a serious message but is everyone taking it seriously?

Have a guess what?

The offer's expired!

The offer has expired.

Does that happen much then?

It has today, we've been in a right muddle today.

Oh, there's been lots today, have there?

Yeah.

Ah, right.

Crikey!

Somebody must be on holiday!

Oh, right.

And as I head around the country, the same thing keeps happening,

time and time again.

These, mate, look they've all expired as well.

Yeah, yeah.

And that one, and that one there.

Blimey!

And that one there, mate.

I should work here!

So what's going on?

I have to tell the compliance manager that his men

are not doing their job.

Oh, I see.

So is there a separate department, then?

Yeah, so you have PI for labels and then you have another team that

takes things off before the date and then you have stock control

that's supposed to doublecheck, but they don't seem to be doing

the right thing.

Oh, I see.

It doesn't seem a terribly difficult or perhaps that long a job,

just to walk round the store, assuming everyone knows

what day it is, you know, to go round and tear off anything

that has had its day.

You'd think so, yeah!

The only thing that went through correctly

was the bag for life!

Maybe not, then!

And it's not just shoppers left confused as old and new promotions

end up side by side.

They've put two up, look.

Oh, right.

That one is correct and that is correct

but they didn't take that one out.

Oh, I see, well, that's confusing.

The longer the offer has been wrong, the bigger the failure of diligence

and the more worried I am, frankly.

In that case, he's not going to like what's coming up next.

At this store, the cashier checks the out-of-date label

but doesn't remove it.

And when I return the next day, neither does someone else.

So, a week later, I go back, and it's still on display.

And when I return a month later, yes, still on the shelf.

The fourth worker finally removes it.

That is very bad.

It's pretty basic that if one customer is shown something wrong

then it's put right to stop other customers being misled.

But at 33 of the 50 stores I went to, the till price was more

than the shelf price.

That's a whopping 66%!

If customer A has come back and complained and been refunded,

that doesn't mean there weren't 20 other customers who didn't spot it

and didn't complain.

So alarm bells would be ringing?

Very much so, yes.

There were obviously major problems with their control of the special

offers and it's the special offers that bring people in,

make people reach for more and perhaps spend a little bit more

than they're meant to when they came into the store,

so that is very, very worrying.

But what does Tesco say?

The company wouldn't provide anyone for interview

but after reviewing our evidence told this programme...

But that's just the start.

Following our investigation, Britain's biggest supermarket says

it's now doublechecking the accuracy of every price in every store -

that's more than 3,500 stores across Britain.

Well, every little helps(!)

And don't forget, if you've got any comments about the night's programme

or you've got a story you think we might like to cover,

you can get in touch on Facebook or on Twitter.

Coming up on Inside Out, the archaeological treasures hidden

in the Yorkshire Wolds.

It's not easy to find you up here!

Now, there's a chance to find some modern-day treasure

in Scunthorpe next weekend.

An art exhibition is opening in the town.

The paintings will contain clues to a very special treasure hunt.

Anyone can take part and the prize is real gold, I kid you not!

Keeley Donovan has been on the hunt.

It's winter in Scunthorpe - not the most promising place to be

looking for treasure.

But later this week, people here will have

a golden opportunity - quite literally.

We've got five golden artefacts that have been created.

They are going to be hidden in and around Scunthorpe.

But to find them, you'll need to crack a code.

Some of them are really difficult.

One of them is supposed to be ridiculously easy.

Each gold object is worth ?1,000 and if you find it you keep

it - simple as that.

Confused?

Let me explain.

It's all in the name of art and Luke Jerram is the artist behind

this slightly crazy scheme.

I had this idea to think about celebrating the history

of Scunthorpe by taking five objects from the museum and created

replicas, I suppose, in solid gold.

So tell me about the statues themselves.

They range from a Jurassic ammonite, which will be millions of years old,

all the way through to a genus train, which is taken

from the steel industry.

There is a Viking brooch.

We've also got a Roman ram and this beautiful Tudor figurine as well.

But finding these ?1,000 solid gold objects will not be that easy.

Treasure hunters will have to crack a code which is hidden in paintings

to be displayed at the 2021 Gallery in Scunthorpe.

And the paintings are being created at this not-so-secret

location here in Bristol.

Each artefact has a painting that goes with it, and the painting

contains clues as to where to find this gold artefact.

There are five paintings and five objects.

Luke has asked artist Vivienne Baker to make the five paintings.

Today he's come to take a look at how things are progressing.

Not that surprisingly, all the clues will be in gold.

Exciting.

It's like Christmas, isn't it?

Yeah, it looks nice, though, doesn't it?

It's going to be good.

Yes, that's quite a good texture.

The paintings are like backgrounds, like something solid

like stone or metal surfaces.

What are you doing now, then?

What's this?

I'm spray painting the clues on.

Have you cracked any of the clues?

No!

Even the easy one?

I don't stand a chance, then!

And even Luke doesn't seem sure.

There's no way I could crack the most difficult one.

I could certainly crack probably two or three of the paintings.

You say that now you know the answers!

I do, yeah.

I've been working with a guy from an unnamed government agency

to work out all the coding and the ciphers for these paintings.

Some are really easy to decode whereas the most

complicated painting, it will take maybe a month

for someone to perhaps work it out.

I know you're not giving a lot away, you don't want us to suss

out the clues just yet, but can we speak to the man?

Let me see what I can do.

So I've managed to persuade Luke to give me the details for his code

man and now I'm heading back up North to meet him.

I'm at Sheffield University to meet mathematician and secret code

setter Dan Fretwell.

How on earth does a mathematician get involved with an art

project like this?

Well, it was quite a surprise, really.

One day, there was an e-mail going round.

The header was just puzzler/codebreaker required.

I just tried to resist the temptation to open it but I failed.

How many people know the answers to the codes?

Just me and Luke.

How difficult are the cyphers that you've set within them?

Some of them are really difficult.

So there are five in total and one of them is supposed

to be ridiculously easy.

The final two in particular are much harder, so we're expecting at least

one of them to go unsolved for quite a while.

To give me a fighting chance, Dan shows me how to solve

a relatively easy puzzle.

So what I've used here is something called a Caesar shift.

It's a very old cipher and basically all I've done is I've took

the alphabet and I've shifted it on one place.

OK, so that would be an I.

Yep.

OK.

I know what you've done here.

There you go.

I know what you've done.

Very clever!

Does this one follow a similar rule?

Meanwhile, at a secret location elsewhere in the country,

some very talented people are working to finish the gold

objects ready for them to be hidden in five locations around Scunthorpe.

Originally, it's a Viking brooch that was found

by a metal detectorist.

I really like the shape of it.

It reminds me of all the wind turbines in Scunthorpe.

This is called Lost Wax Castle.

We are putting the wax into the mould.

We are going to melt the wax out of the mould.

And then, through that tube, we will feed the metal to make the piece.

Oh, look at that, it's boiling!

Right, ready to go, and we will roll it over.

There is this lovely moment of alchemy when you're holding

precious metal and you're melting it down and it's being transformed

into another form, there's something quite magical about that.

It's quite hard to describe.

We've gone from a 3D object to scanning to wax into plaster

and now we're in 18-carat gold.

Look at that, solid gold worth ?1,000, I wonder

who's going to find it?

Weel, not me at this rate.

So I'm off to meet the man whose job it is to organise the exhibition.

Maybe he can give me some clues?

We are in Scunthorpe Centre.

We close to where any figures are hidden?

There are some in urban locations, some in parkland and some

a bit further out of town.

You worried that people will dig up all

the parks?

It was a concern so we were very careful not to bury any of

the objects.

It will be difficult to hide them.

Should we go in balaclavas in the middle of the

night?

We're not sure.

He might have to shake your bid.

So, if someone finds the object they get to keep it,

and they will then decide whether to melt it down

and turn it into hard cash.

Or they can keep the artefact for artistic reasons,

so that's interesting as well for me what the value of an object is,

is it just the value of the gold or does it have more value

as an artefact, as an artwork in its own right?

So Luke and Dominic are going to be

The exhibition starts here in Scunthorpe at the weekend

so get yourself there.

And happy hunting!

Now, most people know the Yorkshire Wolds for its rolling

hills and stunning views, but it has got another claim to fame

- as one of Britain's richest archaeological sites.

We sent intrepid explorer Paul Rose to investigate.

With thousands of acres of lush farm land -

you could be forgiven for thinking that all you'll find in the Wolds

are wheat or potatoes.

But just a few feet below the surface of this chalk rich

landscape there are epic stories of the black death, extreme violence

and heroic journeys.

They're all there if you dig deep enough.

I'm going to take a journey back in time through the wolds -

a place that has provided some of the country's most significant

archaeological finds.

It's very productive landscape in

prehistoric times as is the day, and

all that activity has left its mark.

You can go back through time periods, whether it is prehistoric

Mesolithic material through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the

medieval period, the Romans, and see how humans have shaped

informed that landscape.

The most famous of the wolds' archaeological sites

is the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy near Malton.

And here there's still lots to actually see.

For 700 years, there was an active community here, and this is what

remains of the church and hub of the whole village.

A combination of the Black Death and the way the lad was

farmed meant that by the early 16th century the village was effectively

abandoned.

Archaeologists have had a field day trying to understand

what happened at Wharram Percy.

In the 1950s researchers moved in, and they stayed for 40 years

cataloguing every aspect of life.

You are not just looking at the building or a castle.

You are looking at the every day, how these

people ate, had they produced food, how they lived.

That makes the excavations stand out because it

gives all that contact the daily lives of ordinary people.

People like us.

The Wharram Percy dig is now over but, nearby on the wolds,

archaeologists are still hard at work.

Mel Giles and her team

from Manchester University are working on an extraordinary cold

case that's taken me even further back in time to the iron age

I am on the Trail of the burial that was found

when it was snowing in

1980.

Originally discovered by members of the Army.

The excavated what they thought was a shell and it

turned out to be an iron sword.

Beside the sword were human remains.

It was an amazing find of the lost burial site

of what appeared to be a significant figure.

The grave occupied a prime position with grand views all round.

And the fact the sword was bent but not broken was probably a sign

that the weapon was ALSO laid to rest along with its owner.

It's a dramatic burial with the sword Ben.

We can imagine the wood of the scabbard shattering around

the blade.

So this man somehow had a place high in society?

I think so.

I want to understand his life as well

as his death.

Mel's team are looking for more clues near the burial site

but what's clear is that this warrior met a violent end.

First, I am going to show you his skull, it is very fragile.

His remains have made the short journey to Hull Museum.

That fine line has healed, so that

the sharp thin blade.

It goes hand-in-hand with an injury at the

back of his head, which is a much

larger wound.

He may have died by the sword but new data has shown that this man

was less than fighting fit.

Can you see that discolouration on the rip?

There, particularly, can you see how bumpy it is?

It looks almost like dirt.

It should not be there.

It is as body reacting to severe infection.

The warrior had tuberculosis - a debilitating chest infection that

would slowly have weakened him.

Scientists believe it's the second earliest case of TB to have

been found in Britain.

Whether there's a conflict and he is so poorly he is unable

to defend himself, whether members of his own

community despatching because they do not want

this disease to spread, they are worried, they may even see

him as being cursed by the gods, another possibility is he may want

to grab death the throat, go out in the glorious end,

and it is snowing that his comrades will promise him

the sender.

That's quite something.

While some stories take ages to piece together,

others are uncovered by mother nature.

Close to one of the world's great superstructures is the site of one

of the Wold's most remarkable discoveries.

In 1937, two brothers -

Ted and Willy Wright - found planks sticking out of the mud

of the riverbank at North Ferriby.

The wood looked like it was once part of a boat

but how old it was - well, that came as a complete

surprise.

The shape of the boat at the

brothers to believe it was a Viking

craft but the reality was much more exciting.

This boat was over 4000 years old.

These planks were situated in a gloopy, horrible mud.

How they manage to do it.

What a complete and utter nightmare.

The gloopy mud acted like a preservative playing a key

part of the survival of what remained.

Over the course of several decades, three boats were discovered -

and their design has led historians to believe they were capable

of crossing the open seas.

They showed us that not just look but outwards, out

beyond the Humber Bridge we see today.

These days, we enjoy the Yorkshire Wolds for its natural

beauty and amazing big sky views.

But beneath our feet, there are thousands of secret

stories, and one thing's for sure, what's been found so far has only

scratched the surface of the hidden history of this corner of England.

And you can see more Paul Rose and the hidden history

of the Yorkshire Wolds in a new 2-part series

on BBC Two this spring.