A RETAIL guru who helps to promote floundering shops is using her marketing touch to raise the profile of charities.

Mary Portas, of Mary Queen of Shops fame, visited the North London Hospice shop in Golders Green Road last Friday, as part of her new V-Day campaign, which aims to help charity shops attract more volunteers.

The newly-styled Mary Queen of Charity Shops explained: "This is the continuation of my previous campaign, D-Day, which focused on revamping charity shops and encouraging people to donate more valuable items.

"This improved the contents and image of charity shops. Now we hope to use these improvements to boost the new V-Day campaign to attract more numerous and cross-representative volunteers.

"We also want to make volunteering more accessible through organising drop-in days alongside the usual rotas."

Shop manager Tricia VanGeens said: "We had a lot of fun publicising the event last week, with Mary Portas taking over Oxford Street to try and enlist members of the public while some of the hospice staff and I posed as mannequins in the window of House of Fraser.

She added that two volunteers, both civil servants, turned up on the day to help sort out the books and deliveries.

Ms VanGeens said: "The actual day was a success. We certainly had a lot more help than usual on that particular day, although there hasn't been any increase in the number of volunteers since then."