For both visitors, the consumer chaos was as English as any of the tourist attractions they had “done” in the months since arriving to work and travel in Britain.”It doesn’t compare to anything we have in Germany. That’s why I thought I’d take a photo,” said Mr Wippa, 25.Ms Mills, 26, said: “I’m really glad we came to see this, it’s like a tourist attraction. We’re building ourselves up to do a bit of browsing in the shops soon but I think we need a cigarette first.”She said she was recovering from the jostling she had received in Debenhams and was heading to Selfridges, where security guards were forced to control the entry to popular in-store clothing concessions such as Fendi and Prada.”There was a man in front of me who bought six shirts that were identical in colour and style. I couldn’t believe he was stocking up so fervently,” Ms Mills said.Both tourists were startled by the sudden shortage of Christmas spirit on the streets among determined shoppers.Traffic wardens marshalled the crowds at the crossing points on Oxford Circus, while shop assistants at the Bond Street branch of Next tried to cheer up the stoic shoppers who had endured winding queues to enter the store when it opened at 5am.Across the country, the Next sale seemed to have hit the mark. Hundreds waited outside the MetroCentre in Gateshead from 4am to get into the store while, in Sheffield, people began queuing outside the Meadowhall complex from 2am.

Kate Mason, the marketing manager, said 150,000 people were expected to have visited the centre yesterday. “The first people arrived at 2am waiting for the first store, Next, to open. I got here at 5.45am and there were huge queues of people waiting for the other stores to open at 8am.”A similarly large crowd passed through the doors of the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland. Kate Crosby, the marketing manager, said: “We have been open since 6am for the Next sale, that’s gone down a storm. We probably have record numbers of people going through their doors.” Meanwhile, the first day of the sales at Dudley also appeared to be doing a thriving trade.A spokeswoman for the Brierley Hill shopping centre said: “We have a 13-hour spectacular today and we’re open until 9pm. It’s a bit early to give precise figures but early expectations are that we will have approximately 120,000 people through the doors.”The Next sale was also popular among bargain-hunters at the Victoria Centre in Nottingham.

Security staff said shoppers started queuing at 12.15am while by mid-morning, up to 200 people were waiting to get in.An excited crowd also jostled its way into the John Lewis store at the Buchanan Galleries centre in Glasgow as soon as the shutters were lifted at 9.30am. James Dodds, one shopper waiting outside, said he hoped to match the discounted items he picked up this time last year. Mr Dodds, 32, from Motherwell, said:”I got a £600 leather jacket last year for £200 and if I can repeat that again I will be happy.”In London, Farhanaz Azaree piled her bargains into a discarded shopping trolley that she trundled across the high street in search of more discount goodies.Ms Azaree, 23, from Finsbury Park, north London, said: “I woke up at 6am to get here and I have spent about £400 on about 35 items. A lot of it is gifts for my family and I would like to go into Next but it is just impossible with this trolley. People are shoving too much.”One reluctant consumer was Steven Smith, a weather-beaten husband minding the shopping bags outside Marks & Spencer’s store at Marble Arch.”None of this stuff is mine. I haven’t spent a penny but I’m useful to my wife and two daughters as a bag-carrying donkey on a day like today,” said Mr Smith, 40, a policeman from Ruislip, north-west London..

The shipping company that owns the cargo ship boarded by anti-terrorist officers in the English Channel is considering suing the police. If it succeeds in suing for the delayed journey, compensation could amount to tens of thousands of pounds per day. The search took four days but the ship’s arrival could be delayed for weeks because the east London refinery where it had been due to deliver its cargo of 26,000 tons of raw sugar is now processing other loads.Sudhir Mulji, chairman of the Indian company, told Radio 4’s Today programme that he did not believe terrorists would have had enough time to plant anything, because the ship sailed very soon after it was booked. “The ship was not scheduled to come to England until 6 November. The terrorists would have had to have moved incredibly fast,” he said.Police could have discovered the timescale “by just asking in England”, he added. “The ship belongs to a British company, it’s chartered in England, the brokers are all English – it was just a question of asking someone.”The 450ft MV Nisha was intercepted by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Sutherland in international waters in the English Channel on 21 December in response to a tip-off that it was transporting noxious, hazardous or dangerous substances.