Aldi’s advertising agency has found an amusing way to cash in on the Olympics with a cheeky TV promotion for its orange juice. “Look you can see the bits,” says the old lady ‘star’. Then she adds: “The shorts those athletes wear are much too tight.”

For months, Aldi’s juice with bits has been my daily tipple. This is only because my preferred option — Aldi’s freshly squeezed juice — is no longer available at the Botley Road store that I use.

Having more than once praised this good-value supermarket firm in this column, I think it only fair to diss it over what I am starting to see as its principal failing.

This is its annoying habit of clearing the shelves of the very products that for quality and price mark it out as the superior of its rivals.

I noticed it first with the orange juice. Then came a long ‘drought’ in which there was no low-calorie tonic water, indeed any tonic water at all. Happily, the products are now back.

No such luck, though, following the disappearance of jars of artichoke hearts in vegetable oil. These were better and cheaper than any I have found elsewhere. There have been none for three or four weeks and I am told they are not returning.

Last week and the week before I tried to buy porridge, an Aldi product I had switched to in preference to the Co-op’s jumbo oats. None was there. A member of staff told me there had been a head office decision to stop selling it. This sounded like an answer he had rehearsed with other disappointed customers.

So it’s back to the Co-op for porridge — and possibly the rest of my shopping too.