Mary, Queen of Charity Shops: Final episode

Well it had to come to an end, and fair dos, they seemed to have squeezed a good five months of hard slog into three weekly episodes, but Mary’s crusade to bring charity shops kicking and screaming (or rather hobbling and grumbling) into the 21st Century is all but over.

For someone who has been glued to the screen for the last three Tuesdays in a row, last night seemed to me to be something of a bittersweet victory for the Queen of couture. Yes, while the final part of Mary’s plan involved a trip to London Fashion Week and a last ditch attempt at getting the public to donate their half-decent off-casts resulted in the shop making a profit, it marked the end of an era in Orpington.

Not only had five long-term volunteers handed in their notice but a new crop of local fashion students had moved in to ‘zjuj up’ the place. I wanted it to all be great, and in practice it was, but I couldn’t help but feel sad for the old ladies, some of whom spent over half their lives serving in the shop.

However, I may be being over sensitive here, because there were certainly some of the ladies who appeared to really embrace the new look shop. And credit where credit’s due, if there is one thing Mary excels in, it’s coming up with a clever idea. This week saw the creation of “D Day” (“Donate, don’t dump!”) - a genius plan to encourage more public donations, in fact, it’s success means it will be rolled out across all 250 Save The Children shops (though it does make me ask what on earth the marketing people at Save the Children have been doing for the last 88 years – apart from misguidedly recruiting teams of hyper-active do-gooder students to hassle me on the way to and from work, that is.)

I was particularly encouraged that Mary’s brave attempt to bridge the generation gap might just work by the enthusiasm displayed by the charming Ingrid who, with her indiscernible accent and cheeky repartee even performed a striptease to a roomful of Google employees in an effort to get the message across that one man’s old tat is another man’s morning suit. It seemed to work, and the donations came flooding in. While a nervous duo speaking to a roomful of staff at publishing giant, Emap overcame their personal demons to get their message across. Triumph over adversity and all that certainly makes for good telly.

And even the visit to London Fashion Week was a success. Dragging her pimped- up bunch of oldies with her, Mary pounced on unsuspecting fashionistas and arranged for them to be styled up by Orpington’s finest. Even pointless celebrity Peaches Geldof was given a ‘grey makeover’ while Erin O’Conner, wearing an outfit that looked like it may have been stolen from a drunken matador strutted about extolling the virtues of shopping vintage. I did wonder, however, if one would make it through a night in Orpington unscathed in that ensemble. Still the fashion lot are a barmy bunch and it got the press buzzing about like wasps on jam.

So the last stage in the master plan was to get the young ‘uns involved, which entailed asking students at the local Ravensbourne College (past students include Stella McCartney and Bruce Oldfield) to come and sell their wares at the shop with half the profits going to the charity. The plan seems to work as the feedback from HQ was that the shop is now making over £2K a week! Still, I wonder just how long it will be until the oldies get replaced one by one by the bright young things. I do hope not, and maybe, just maybe, Mary’s vision of a charity shop utopia can be achieved…only time will tell.