Hurrah for the madding crowd

9:50am Monday 14th May 2007

SHOPPING is not everybody's bag. For some, the idea of trailing round the shops for hours on end is tantamount to torture.

For others, it's heaven, coming a close second to watching Johnny Depp and George Clooney wrestling for their affection in a vat full of Green & Black's chocolate.

There was a time when I couldn't stand shopping. I just didn't get it. What was the point of buying a new pair of jeans when I had a perfectly good pair (bar a few holes and the odd loose seam) hanging in the wardrobe? And why buy more than one pair of shoes when I've only got two feet?

I just didn't get the point. And then suddenly it struck me: there isn't a point. It's pointless, and that's what makes it feel so decadently, indulgently good.

Once I realised that aimless self-indulgence was the whole raison d'etre of retail therapy, I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I didn't need Prozac anymore - I had Primark!

But - and it's a big but (please don't start making up your own jokes about the size of my trousers) - for me, shopping has to be an anonymous experience. I can't stand it when staff are too chummy, chatty and chirpy.

A hello and a smile while they are taking my money is fine, but I'm not shopping for a new best friend and I can generally locate a T-shirt without assistance (I do it every day at home without getting lost on the way to the wardrobe).

I like to be one of the herd, to shop unnoticed in a homogenous huddle. I don't want special treatment. I just want to be left alone to spend more money than is wise on clothes I will rarely wear.

The recent shopping scrums at Topshop, New Look and Primark made me think I was not alone in wanting to indulge in group retail therapy, but apparently the tide is turning. A new trend has doggy-paddled across the Atlantic to our shores, and that trend is "salon shopping".

Stores in London are already offering private shopping sessions, where clients can kick back with a glass of bubbly while trying on the latest designs without having to rub shoulders, and other more fleshy parts of their anatomy, with the hoi polloi.

It can only be a matter of time before salon selling comes our way, but I'll be happy to lurk at the back of the queue.

I was once steamrollered into an afternoon of salon shopping and I hated it. I had done a bit of scribbling for a boutique in Wetherby, and instead of paying me in cash the owners decided to treat me to clothes from their latest range.

It'll be fun, they said, you can try everything on and give us a fashion parade. It'll be a hoot!

As someone who would rather kiss Bernard Manning than put on a fashion parade, the afternoon barely registered on my hoot-o-meter at all. A colonic irrigation would probably have rated higher.

I, as you may have already gathered, am a jeans and T-shirt kinda gal. I scrub up all right, but I don't scrub up very often. This is my style, but the lovely ladies who ran the shop saw it as their challenge.

Can't you just see yourself pushing the buggy in the park wearing these, one said while swirling a pair of white capri pants under my nose.

And wouldn't this be marvellous for lunch with the girls, said the other, shoving me into the changing room with a navy and white striped top and matching jaunty neckerchief.

Yes, if I was Elizabeth Hurley it would be tickety-boo. But I am the sort of person who gets goose poo on their trousers at the park and squeezes tomato sauce down their front in a café.

I should have just asked for the cash, but instead I ended up walking away with an ankle length knitted skirt and an asymmetrical sweater that was so complicated to get into I could never find the neck hole.

Needless to say, they went straight to a charity shop, and I went straight back to the glorious anonymity of New Look.