Channel 5 remember the shops we loved and lost

Best on the Box highlight for July 25th…

The High Street Shops We Loved & Lost travels back to the high street of yesteryear to celebrate the favourite shop brands that we’ve loved and lost, from Woolworths to Wimpy, Top Shop to Tammy Girl, Blockbuster to BHS.

The first of the two-part series tonight sees in the first episode the heyday of the high street back to Swinging London, where brands like Biba and Mary Quant were in vogue. Channel 5 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 the show recalls how all kinds of transactions that we now do online with a few clicks, from paying bills to withdrawing cash from the bank, once meant a trip to the high street.

Narrated by Hayley Tamaddon and featuring contributors such as Eamonn Holmes, Anne Hegerty, Rufus Hound, Nick Hewer, Lesley Joseph and Penny Smith.

The High Street Shops We Loved & Lost tonight at 8 pm on Channel 5.