﻿“I got a Dyson vacuum cleaner but I don’t even know if I want it. I just picked it up,” Louise Haggerty, a 56-year-old hairdresser and waitress, said of her 1am trip to the Black Friday sales. “It was mental in there. It was crazy. It was absolutely disgusting, disgusting.” 
Haggerty had ventured out to the 24-hour Sainsbury’s supermarket in Harringay, north-east London with a friend in the hope of snapping up a bargain flat-screen TV. “But so many people pushed in the queue we didn’t have a chance,” she said. “The poor woman who was second in the queue was pushed out by a crowd of youths. She didn’t get anything. People were behaving like animals – it was horrible,” she said. “I only saw two security guards.” 
Frustrated with not being able to buy a Blaupunkt 40” TV reduced from £299.99 to £149.99, Haggerty rushed to pick up a Dyson Animal Vac, down from £319.99 to £159.99. “I don’t even know how much it costs; I don’t know even know if I’m going to buy it. I just wanted something,” she said. “There are lads in there with three, four, five tellies. It’s not fair.” 
One of those lads was Andy Blackett, 30, an estate agent, who had two trolleys full of bargains. “I got two coffee makers, two tablets, two TVs and a stereo,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you the prices but I know they’re bargains.” But his mate Henry Fischer, a 19-year-old student, wasn’t as successful. “Someone snatched my telly from me – it’s cos I’m the smaller one.” 
Blackett, Fischer and some mates had driven to Sainsbury’s at 12.45am after retreating from the “bedlam” of Tesco’s 24-hour Lea Valley supermarket, where the Black Friday sale started at midnight. “Tesco was scary so we came here instead,” Blackett said.