Early bird queues at shops

 Tills were ringing furiously at stores across the West Midlands today as Boxing Day bargain hunters raced to pick up the best buys as sales started.

At Dudley’s Merry Hill Centre, queues started forming outside Debenhams well before its 7am opening. Car parks were already full for the rest of the centre’s opening at 10am.

In Wolverhampton people queued outside PC World to snap-up cut-price computer equipment with student Jayde Jarrett, aged 18, of Penn Fields, first in the St John’s Retail Park queue at 6.40am to pay £199.99 for a laptop for her Birmingham University studies.

When PC World’s Axletree Way branch in Wednesbury opened about 500 were queuing outside.

Meanwhile some 27,500 people went into Birmingham’s Bullring in the first hour of trading - a rise of 3.5 per cent on last year’s figures bringing December’s visitor total to 4.5million.

Tomorrow big queues are expected outside Next ready for a 5am opening. Beatties and other stores also launch sales tomorrow.

Phil Waley, manager of Currys.digital, Lichfield, said some of the best bargainswere on TVs.

In Stafford Matalan, at Queensville, started its 50 per cent off almost everything sale at 9am.