Bargain hunters queue through night

The St Stephen’s Day sales in Britain got off to a flying start with shops reporting a surge in business in the first hour of trading.

Bargain hunters had been queueing outside Selfridges in London’s West End since 10.30pm on Christmas Day.

Meave Wall, Selfridges store director, said: “In the first hour across all of our stores we anticipate we will take probably around £2m [€2.5m], which is up on last year.”

The hot pick for shoppers at Selfridges were the deals in handbags and accessories.

John Lewis predicted that its “mobile Christmas” is here to stay as shoppers snapped up deals on their mobile and tablet devices during Christmas Day. It accounted for 72% of traffic to johnlewis.com and was the store’s “biggest ever Christmas Day for orders”.

It also noted strong sales in the first hour of its online clearance, which began on Christmas Eve at 5pm.

Interest in shopping dipped between 1pm and 4pm on Christmas Day as people sat down to enjoy Christmas dinner but sales then peaked at 9 to 10pm as customers logged on while watching the Downton Abbey Christmas Special.

Harrods, Selfridges, Liberty and House of Fraser are offering designer goods at a fraction of their usual price .