Woolworths could be coming back to the high street

An old high street favourite could be on its way back, right in time for Brexit. A former director of Woolworths, which collapsed nearly a decade ago amid debts of, like, £400 million, is trying to persuade the brand’s owners to let him use the name on a new chain of bricks-and-mortar stores.

Woolworths is one of those shops which people remember with fondness, but never actually bought anything from.

It’s best remembered for its luxurious collection of pick’n’mix sweets, and it was without doubt a good place, pre-internet, to buy CD and cassette singles, but the rest of it was just stuff you could get a bigger choice of online for less money. The internet in a nutshell, we guess.

Its closure was a tragedy at the time, with around 800 stores shutting their doors on the eve of its hundredth anniversary, at a cost of 27,000 jobs, but the campaign to bring it back is quite weird, considering how many other high street stores have also disappeared down in recent years, including Peacocks, JJB Sports, Comet and BHS.

Regardless, it’s not even certain that it will come back. Shop Direct, the brand owner, has yet to comment on Tony Page’s media campaign to give him the Woolworths name.

Claiming in an interview with Daily Star Online that he is still “emotionally attached” to the brand, he said: “I have contacted Shop Direct and said ‘you're not using the brand anymore, would you consider giving it to someone who would?’" 

We’re going to get a lot more of this nonsense as Brexit sends us tumbling back through time.

(Image: Stuart Clarke/REX/Shutterstock)