Retail guru Mary Portas didn’t have to think too hard about where she wanted to hold the first reading and book signing for her memoir, Shop Girl – she’s coming home.

“I particularly wanted to make the first one local, on the old home ground,” says the 54-year-old, who grew up in North Watford and who will be coming to the area courtesy of the Chorleywood Bookshop. The event was originally to be held in Sarratt but, such was the interest from Watfordians keen to hear about Mary’s early life in the town, it had to be moved to the larger Dr Challoner’s High School in Little Chalfont.

“And I know the bookshop,” Mary continues, “my old English teacher at St Joan of Arc in Rickmansworth, Moira Coleman, used to own it. She’s in my book – she gave me my reading for RADA.”

But we’ll get to that – when Mary discovers that I too am a Watford girl, the carefully prepared interview questions fly out the window and the conversation jumps from shared memories of Watford Market and Cassio College to updates on what shops are still on the High Street and the St Albans Road, and is dotted with the recollections of her home and school and early work life in Watford that make up most of the memoir.

Mary Newton, as she was then, was born into a large Irish family in a small end-of-terrace in Windsor Road in North Watford (“The papers and the internet always say Rickmansworth, they’re wrong! It was North Watford.”). She went to Holy Rood Catholic Junior School (in North Watford) and then St Joan of Arc Catholic School in Ricky.

Her book is made up of vignettes from her childhood and teenage years, finishing as her career is taking off in her early 20s, with each memory being linked to a product she brought or something she owned or grew up with – the perfume her mother used to wear, or Chappie dog food, which she once ate for a dare – or places in the town– mass at St Helen’s Roman Catholic Church, shopping in Chelsea Girl and Miss Selfridge, and Parkgate Junior School, which she accidentally set fire to.

“I had such a great time doing the book,” says Mary, who now lives in Primrose Hill with her wife, Melanie Rickey, and their two-year-old son Horatio. “There was so much stuff that came back to me, and then I’ve got four siblings who also reminded me of stuff, and I was like ‘Oh my God, yes, of course!’”

The book is full of places and things that people who grew up in Watford in the 1960s and 70s – and in the 80s, like me – will recognise – Clements the department store, where Mary had a Saturday job; her dad’s favourite shop, Austin Reed; trips into Watford town centre on a Saturday being a proper outing; reading Jackie magazine; and riding the 321 bus.

“North Watford really did feel like a community back then,” says Mary. “St Albans Road had all the little shops, you all knew each other, and because in the 70s nobody did the big, loading-up-at-the-supermarket shop, you went to the shops every day and that was a very important social structure and social network. That was lovely.

“I remember going shopping for Our Price records, and to the Woolworths there, and the butcher’s and the baker’s, Carey’s the stationers, you had everything you needed, and everybody walking up the road to and from the Junction. I remember it being a place I loved.

“And Queens Road used to be so cute, then. They had a Habitat down there and my brother worked in his hair salon there with his friend Terry – my dad saw the advert for that job in the Watford Observer! In fact, if you go back in the archives of the Watford Observer you’ll see my little play reviews – Mary Newton reviewing the Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Dramatic Society, no less, which I was a member of, and the Pump House Theatre, from the late 1970s. Have a look!”

Mary’s introduction to the world of shops came from her father Sam’s job as a salesman for Brooke Bond tea, when she’d follow him on his rounds to local shopkeepers, and, like most teenage girls, she had Saturday jobs – at a bakery on the St Albans Road and then at Clements.

“I loved it there,” Mary remembers. “I was what was called a floater – what a hideous title! I’d go in on a Saturday and they’d go ‘You’re in menswear today, Miss Newton’, or it was the toy department or school uniforms. I liked the fashion department best – although I say ‘fashion’ rather loosely! We had a rather glamorous manager there, I can’t remember her name. And you know that was the inspiration for Are You Being Served? We had the floor walker with the carnation in his jacket, that was true!”

But the young Mary had no thoughts of a career in retail, she wanted to be an actress and, with the help of the aforementioned Miss Coleman, applied for a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and was invited to audition and then offered a place. But her mother had died of meningitis and Mary was struggling to run the household and look after her younger brother, forcing her to turn the place down in favour of getting a ‘proper’ job.

Faced with the prospect of a ‘lifetime’ working for a radio parts warehouse on the Greycaine Industrial Estate, Mary applied to do a visual merchandising course – shop windows – at Cassio College (later West Herts College) in Nascot Wood (“It’s houses now? No!”), because it was the only course that was available.

“I was just completely lost after my mum died,” says Mary, “I didn’t know what to do. With the course, I could stay at home and be with my brother, and that was it. I hated every little bit of it, but I think that was because of the grief.”

Mary got a two-week work experience placement at Harvey Nichols while on her course at Cassio and ‘fell in love’ with window dressing. “I realised, wow, this was completely fabulous, and that was the beginning for me,” she says.

Mary got a job at Harrods doing the window displays (“I loved it there, it was wonderful”) for about three years – during which time, when she was still just 18, her father also died, of a heart attack – and then, after a spell as a freelancer, went to work for Topshop so she could learn business management. By the age of 24, she was running the display team at Oxford Circus and worked her way up to be in charge of the group’s 400 shops.

Then she was poached by Harvey Nichols and Mary Queen of Shops was born. Mary is credited with turning Harvey Nichols from a staid department store into a modern fashion powerhouse and she now travels the world advising on retail strategy and has appeared in her own TV shows on the BBC and Channel 4. In 2011, she was commissioned to lead an independent review on the future of Britain’s high streets, and the government committed £10 million to supporting her 28 recommendations.

Mary left Watford for London when she was about 20 and the rest of her family moved out at around the same time, but she moved to Bushey after her first marriage and lived there for roughly ten years, with her daughter and eldest son both being born in Watford General Hospital. She returned last year to officially open the renovated pond in the high street, and occasionally visits friends in Chorleywood.

“I’m very much looking forward to coming back,” she says. “It was a very good place to grow up, I love it. Give my love to Watford.”

  • An Evening with Mary Portas is at Dr Challoner’s High School, off Cokes Lane, Little Chalfont on Tuesday, February 24 at 7.30pm. Details: 01923 283566, chorleywoodbookshop.co.uk. Shop Girl: A Memoir is released on Thursday, February 26 through Doubleday. Details: transworldbooks.co.uk