The demise of WHSmith reminds me of when my friend queued for ages to buy a protractor, only to get to the front and discover that it was Jeffrey Archer doing a signing
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Saw Charlie Dimmock doing the same in Birmingham. She was ignored by everyone even though she, of course, wasn’t wearing a bra. (Does she even own a bra?)
Remember craning my neck to see through crowds as to who was doing a signing in '90s (maybe even early 2000s) that had brought in quite a few people, and it was Rolf Harris
Had some celeb customers when I worked there: John Deacon of Queen was a regular, Andy Summers, Sue Lawley, William Franklyn (the Schweppes bloke), The Pretenders' drummer
In turn, that reminded me of eating in L'Autre Place, the Polish-Mexican restaurant in Shepherds Market, Mayfair and finding Jeffrey Archer and his Barrister were on the next table, the night before his court case started. Surprisingly loud and confident (and wrong)
Honestly you could see the WHSmith demise if you walked into any outlet. What is it? Post office? Hobby shop? Book shop? Stationery shop? Trouble is, it wasn’t good any any one of those things. Except the post office bit. And that wasn’t them. Sad.
Charging £2.50 for a normal bottle of water just because you're "near" the station was never going to be a winning business strategy. Quite frankly I'm glad they're done.
You’ll be disappointed to find that it’s only the high street side of the business they’ve offloaded, station and airport outlets remain as it makes 75% of the total profits.
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There’s no way they aren’t reminded of that daily, I hope!
john deacon - bass
andy summers - guitar
sue lawley - lead vocals
Honestly you could see the WHSmith demise if you walked into any outlet. What is it? Post office? Hobby shop? Book shop? Stationery shop? Trouble is, it wasn’t good any any one of those things. Except the post office bit. And that wasn’t them. Sad.