The High Street Shops we Loved & Lost - Season 1
Season 1
Episodes
Episode 1
The first episode traces the heyday of the high street back to Swinging London, where brands like Biba and Mary Quant were all the vogue.
We celebrate perhaps the most missed shop brand of them all, Woolworths, and in particular its much-loved pic'n'mix section. Nick Hewer traces the chain's rise to becoming a cherished high street fixture, while former Woolworths shop assistant Cheryl Baker reveals the secrets from the other side of the counter.
Robert Elms reminisces about renting a TV from Radio Rentals and watching the football scores outside their shops.
Rustie Lee wonders how many books of Green Shield stamp books it took to get a Ford Escort.
Carrie Grant shares personal memories of just how bad an idea it was for supermarkets to ban prams from their premises.
Bobby Friction takes us back to his teenage shopping trips while Ortis Deley fondly remembers his first suit from Burtons.
Rufus Hound was in his element in the Debenhams café with his nan, while Janet Ellis has happy memories of Wimpy, and less happy ones of communal changing rooms in clothes shops.
And we recall how all kinds of transactions that we now do on-line with a few clicks, from paying bills to withdrawing cash from the bank, once meant a trip to the high street.
Episode 2
In the second show, we travel back to an era when booking a holiday meant a trip to the high street to visit Lunn Poly or Thomas Cook. We celebrate the new giants that revolutionised our shopping habits from Our Price and Toys R Us in the 80s to Athena and Phones 4u in the 90s.
Eamonn Holmes reveals that in the 70s he worked as a trainee manager in the ladies underwear department of Primark in Northern Ireland, Siân Pattenden gets very excited about back-to-school stationery, while Nick Hewer considers how catalogue shopping was a game changer for families where funds were scarce.
Bidisha Mamata revels in Victoria Wood's brilliant take on department store make-up demos. Anne Hegerty and Lesley Joseph bemoan the loss of Debenhams. Penny Smith recalls the threat that if you wore the wrong kind of shoes as a child you'd end up with ‘claws for feet'. Robert Elms spills the beans on his time as a less-than-helpful shop assistant.
And Mark Heyes sees reasons for optimism that the high street as we knew and loved it could still have a future.
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