I AM not the most patient of supermarket shoppers, and a slow customer, struggling to decide how many carrots they need or trying to find money-off coupons tucked away in their bag as they hold up the queue at the till, can send my casual tutting spiralling towards full-blown Tourette’s.

Take Amanda, for instance. Her bill comes in at an astonishing $1,100, but with her coupons scanned in she only pays $51.

Fair play, but she was in the supermarket for more than six hours and her nine trolley loads took two car trips to transport home.

“I hope I don’t see you for a very long time,” she tells the cashier.

Not as much as he hopes he doesn’t see you, I would imagine.

Just how annoyed would you be to get behind her at the check-out?

Not as annoyed as you would be to have Jodie in front of you.

Jodie gets through without spending a penny — well, that’s probably not true as she’s been in the supermarket for so long she probably had to.

Well, she probably had a coupon to make sure she didn’t have to pay, anyway.

Her haul includes 40 boxes of pasta and 40 bottles of sauce, and she admits couponing is almost a full-time occupation when you take into consideration locating the offers, cutting them out, arranging them in date order, working out what is available and when, looking at sell-by dates, storing everything in a certain order — and then there’s the shopping itself.

Still, it probably pays better than a job and this particular shop saves her about $600.

Joyce is an even more extreme case. She hasn’t paid for any toiletries in 34 years and her daily routine includes a two-hour trawl around her Philadelphia hometown — did I need to say this programme is based in America? — in search of coupons.

She collects about $200 worth every day.

A single mother by 15, she started using money-off coupons out of necessity, but now has a stockpile of more than 10,000 items and teaches the art to others.

“Bad shopping truly breaks my heart,” she says.

Nathan and Lacy Engels have saved so much money through couponing they have cancelled out debts of $17,000 and are about to start reducing their mortgage for their house, which includes a double garage they have converted into a store for their produce.

Nathan’s haul on this particular supermarket sweep includes a whole trolley of toothbrushes and he needs the help of a team of assistants to carry his 2,000 items, which, with the use of his coupons — for which he has bought an industrial clipper to avoid blisters while cutting them out — rang through at just $300 as opposed to the $7,000 they would have cost otherwise.

Me, I’m pleased enough when I spot a half-price bottle of wine offer.