Things are quiet out there, on the high streets. Traditionally, this Twixmas week – that netherworld of food comas, plodding Scrabble games, terrible television and miserable walks – is when half the country hits the shops with gay abandon. Alarms would be set on Boxing Day morning, to beat the queues and snatch a bargain. People would do stretches and shadow box from dawn to ensure they’d get to the 40 per cent off sale rail before anyone else.

But this year it’s different. Black Friday, the relentless rise of online shopping, and above all a nervousness about whether two-for-one on hairdryers is really worth contracting the omicron variant, has all meant that even retail addicts have gone cold turkey – preferring, well, cold turkey to in-person purchases.

Across the UK, Boxing Day sales footfall was down 45 per cent on 2019, according to industry data from retail analyst Springboard. Imagine Oxford Street as a zombie film, the Trafford Centre as if it’s been evacuated, your local carpet showroom with almost no customers – which is actually no different from any other day, but it’s still an arresting image.

Something needs to be done. Somehow, retailers need to lure shoppers back to the high streets. But… how? Fortunately I’ve been wracking my brains, and here are some ideas.

Clone Mary Portas

Being one singular human, the Queen of Retail can only get around so many shops to dole out her secrets to shopping success. Six per day, I reckon, if she’s well-caffeinated. But there are 306,985 retail outlets in the UK, and by my maths it would take her more than 51,000 days to get around them all. We don’t have that much time.

The solution? Clone the Portas. Twenty-five years since Dolly the Sheep, not a lot of progress seems to have been made in the old duplication game, so it’s high time we fired up the machine (or whatever it was) and forged a few more Portii. They can all have different hair colours, so we can tell them apart. The original Mary can wear a little crown.

When ready, Army Portas can be dispatched all over the nation, pre-programmed with a mission to make over any shop they come across. The country’s high streets will be thriving again within days.

Make zorbing an option

After almost two years of pandemic, we know all about PPE: the different kinds of masks, the visors, the Hazmat suits… Yet shopping is still deemed too risky, despite all that. So we need a safer solution that rules out any cross-contamination, but is also attractive enough for shoppers to want to take it.

The answer is zorbing. Sealed, antibacterial hamster balls we can hire at the mall or in the high street park and ride, then bumble about in all day as we go around buying things. It may cause some chaos, but retailers can be warned not to build pyramids of soup tins or Champagne waterfalls.

Switch the internet off for a week

Not massively keen on this one, myself. But it might be worth a go.

Declare the pandemic over, just for a day

Announce a Downing Street press conference, get Boris, Whitty, Vallance – the whole gang – to play along, and announce that Covid’s over. The PM will simply love delivering a message of unbridled joy based on a creative interpretation of the data, and the scientists can be bribed with Quality Street. Filled with VE Day-style relief, people will flock back to Currys to celebrate, spending their Christmas vouchers on anything and everything. Shop Out to Help Out.

Then, once the retail economy has stabilised, we can call another press conference and tell the country to get back inside, because it was just a prank and everybody probably has Covid now. The nation will understand, given time, because it was for the greater good. Plus, they’ll all have new PlayStations.

Shops for Covid negative people, shops for Covid positive people

PPE wouldn’t even be required in the latter, they could just cough and gag and stumble about in a plague pit of purchasing power. And participating shops could put out any old tat, because if there’s one thing we know about Covid it’s that it dulls your sense of taste.

Turn it into a game

If we’re cloning Portas, we might as well reanimate the late Dale Winton (I know Rylan Clark-Neal presents a reboot, but only the original will do for this national emergency) and have Supermarket Sweep in some shops.

Others can use Squid Game as a model. Attract debt-ridden customers to John Lewis by having them compete in a series of deadly children’s challenges with the promise of winning their entire shopping cart if they win. James Corden can host, because he’d say yes, and the whole thing can be live on Channel 5. 

Complimentary puppies

As in, gratis, rather than dogs that are really kind about your new coat. Kittens, geckos, llamas – whatever people like, they can collect one with their trolley and have it as an emotional support retail therapy animal as they shop. At the till there could be an option to purchase your new pet, otherwise it’ll be dipped in a vat of Dettol and put back for someone else. 

Reopen Woolworths

But only if the wall of pick n’ mix returns too.