From flash mobs, to pop up shops, town criers to Dragons’ Den competitions - yes, in case you missed the latest chapter of the Mary Portas and Grant Shapps show it was entertaining stuff, if the jury still remains very much out on the long term impact of their bid to rescue our High Streets.

At the weekend communities minister Shapps revealed the first 12 lucky winners from the nearly 400 towns that entered the competition to win £120,000 to trial ideas inspired by the Queen of Shops’ recent report.

One thing is for certain, nobody can doubt the success of the project in capturing the attention, with the hundreds of You Tube videos sent in for Shapps no doubt keeping him up late into the night -a bit like Eurovision at times but with some even worse singers.

Now we will see if the money - combined with the obvious huge enthusiasm on the ground- will be enough to overcome in any meaningful way the huge economic factors lining up against the High Street, as these test beds try to turn the show into reality.

Shapps, in his letter to the winners, promises the support of at least two people - himself and Mary -sounding ever more like a coach from The Voice when he said he was looking forward to working with the contestants-whoops! town teams - to drive forward their “bold plans”

But from Wolverhampton came one cynical voice responding on its successful team’s website which summed up what more than a few others fear.

“It will probably end up with just the Town Criers…,” he wrote. “O yea O yea O yea another shop has closed.”

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