AHHH, the happy smiling faces of Tesco staff last year as they posed for our cameras handing over ‘surplus’ provisions to Oxford Food Bank as part of a new deal.

Your local, community-friendly supermarket giant was doing its bit by handing over food to the food bank that it could no longer realistically sell.

What fine fellows.

The food bank tells us that at the start of this agreement the deal was for 100 meals a day – a real boon to a great charity working to help those in need.

But since then, the food bank says the donations have dwindled to the point where it has been receiving nothing.

In its defence, the retailer says its ordering system is so good that it has little wastage.

This is a considerable turnaround from last year when staff were quoted as saying: “It was a shame to see so much perfectly good food going to waste.”

And it sits a little uneasily with the story this week that Tesco admitted it generated 30,000 tonnes of waste nationally in six months this year.

We hope this episode has not been a case of Every Little Helps when it comes to free publicity.

Certainly for Oxford Food Bank that Tesco catchphrase rings fairly hollow now.