At Liberty, the opulent London department store

At Liberty, the opulent London department store, silk scarves start at £175 a pop. You can buy an Art Deco ring for £70,000, and a life-size cuddly bear for £1,995. The prices may be steep, but, as we learned in last night’s fly-on-the-wall documentary, Liberty of London (Channel 4), it’s where the store’s wealthier customers do their weekly shopping. “This is my corner shop,” declared Felix Dennis, the multimillionaire publisher who has furnished seven houses with Liberty garb. “Except,” he laughed, “there isn’t much in the milk department.”

Dennis was just one of the gems in last night’s episode, the first of three in the new series set in Liberty. Along the lines of Inside Claridge’s, the store invited a camera crew through its doors to capture the organised chaos in the run-up to Christmas. From shoe-shopping with the boss to tête-à-têtes about shoulder pads with the zany haberdashery department, nothing, it seemed, was off limits.

Soft lighting, intimate interviews and a gossipy informal tone made it watchable from the outset. The camerawork sped through the colourful departments and zoomed in on faces and products, making me feel like I was ambling through the store and browsing its wares. But the real stars were the employees, best described by the Carry On-esque receptionist Judy Rose: “I’m not saying everyone’s mad, but they’re not normal.”

There was the boss, Ed Burstell, a slick-haired, fast-talking American. We watched him write birthday cards to staff (“each one has a £5 voucher inside”), revamp the historic scarf department and try to squeeze selling space into every nook and cranny of the store’s Tudor walls.

In the knitting department, we met Grayson Perry, who proclaimed John Lewis “too beige”; and Manolo Blahnik, inventor of the high-end shoes, made a cameo in a pair of purple braces and a white lab coat.

Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk