Should I bother with shopping on the high street when I can go online while sipping a G&T?

My family has been at the frontier of retail evolution. My grandad, as an immigrant from India in the Fifties, sold dusters, ties and hosiery from a suitcase, door-to-door. His battered bag became a market stall, which my dad and uncle turned into a national high-street chain. I then established an online retailer. And for us now, the decline of the high street isn’t to be mourned.

The last time I went into a shop on the high street the causes of death were easy to see: the shelves only had a fraction of the items available from online competitors, the prices were higher, the other customers got in my way, the fluorescent lighting was soul-destroying and the whole experience gnawed a chunk out of my day. Online, I could have done all my shopping in the time it takes the next gin and tonic to arrive.

Yes, it’s sad to see House of Fraser go — its Oxford Street flagship store is among the casualties following the company’s recent decision to close 31 stores. It’s tough on the workers, too — does online shopping create as many jobs as it destroys?

It’s no wonder there is talk, yet again, about what needs to be done to rescue old-style shops. Better marketing? A tax on online sales? Government grants? None of it will work. The truth is that people are ready to move on. What we’re hearing is the high street’s death rattle — and there’s no cure in sight.

You just can’t make people shop where they don’t want to. More is being bought every year — but in a different way. Loving the high street because it feeds our nostalgia is as ridiculous as getting me to dust down my grandad’s suitcase, fill it with cardigans and work the doorsteps of suburbia wearing winkle-pickers and a kipper-tie. Though, come to think of it, I’ve been searching for a reason to make winkle-pickers socially acceptable again, so I may just give it a try.

But there is something we do need to sort out — what to do with all the empty retail space. Streets don’t have to be boarded up, scarred by decline. They can come alive. We’re short of housing, so let’s turn old shops into new flats.

On Monday I had a drink in an urban garden centre on a changed high street in Stoke Newington. Wine and wisteria. Who knew that national salvation lies 10 minutes’ walk from Finsbury Park Tube?

The illness is spreading: out-of-town retail parks are next. My dad may miss them. He enjoys getting an MOT, a flat-pack wardrobe and drill bits in one place. Me, I’ll be giving the tumbleweed a helpful push towards the entrance.

My marathon toenail torture

I wish I had a jawline that could cut through steel and a coiffure that could survive a nuclear blast. If I did I would hope to take part in the World Cup. Since I haven't, I’ll stick to a sport that I can do: running.

Seeing sweaty joggers in this week’s tepid London sunshine brought back memories of the time I ran in real heat. I completed the Marathon Des Sables — a 150-mile self-sufficiency race held in the Sahara Desert.

I had never run more than three miles before signing up. But I was determined to do it. I wanted to prove that a member of my family is capable of running further than to the doors of Harvey Nichols. I also wanted to show that a gay man could rough it.

Stripped of my silks, and dressed in several types of man-made fabrics, I fell out of an army truck in the middle of a sandstorm. So to describe the ensuing seven days as being “out of my comfort zone” would be an understatement. Blisters covered my feet and even grew under my nail-beds, forcing up my toenails.

By day four I had ripped five of them off (my pedicurist still hasn’t forgiven me). I experienced pain that I didn’t think was possible and had an avocado craving that no person should ever go through. But I lurched, stumbled and occasionally sashayed right over the finish line.

Once back, however, I sprinted at record speed to my silk scarves, hugged them and told my darlings that I would never leave them for so long ever again.

*Humankind can learn vital lessons from Priyanka Chopra, the Indian actress and friend of our new Duchess of Sussex. She can make the world a better place if we let her. Her beauty is striking. But more so is her presence.

Priyanka has the power of sheer command that I saw among the society women of India when I lived there.

A heady mix of nonchalance, elongated vowels and couture. Meghan Markle looked lovely but it was Priyanka with her perfect posture and shoulder-pads-of-death that made Windsor tremble on her wedding day.