Are shoppers avoiding one of Shropshire’s busiest retail areas because of its growing army of so-called “charity muggers”? Ben Bentley investigates.

What’s the best way to walk up Pride Hill in Shrewsbury?

An odd question, perhaps, but it turns out that the old-fashioned direct approach – one foot in front of another in a straight-line trajectory – is no longer possible.

Why? Because of an obstacle course made up of people festooned with photo IDs, who clutch clipboards and stop you with the dreaded words: “Excuse me sir, have you got ten seconds?”

You know the type – smiling energy suppliers, market researchers, bucket-shakers and fluorescent bib wearers who want you to part with your money to improve conditions in the Third World. All perfectly honourable causes, even if some do use slightly dubious techniques.

But during an economic time when fewer of us are giving to charity, the arrival of the “charity mugger” is evidently triggering avoidance tactics in shoppers who can be seen to walk up Pride Hill doing the sidestep shuffle – a defensive, zig-zagging gait adopted to prevent them from becoming a victim in what has become the high street version of British Bulldog.

I know – I end up copying everyone else on Shrewsbury’s main shopping street and doing it myself.

The presence of the charity worker is raising concerns that they are driving away shoppers who, reportedly, are sometimes asked to hand over their bank details.

My test is to find out if it is possible to get from one end of Pride Hill without being targeted and stopped. Or, if I can’t, to join the growing army of sidestep shufflers and see how long the walk takes me – preferably without having handed over all of my personal details, pledged a fiver a month to a Third World cause, joined a UK vehicle breakdown service, or signed a petition for equal rights for water voles. Or something.

I time my walk up Pride Hill. Without the “chuggers”, from bottom to top at a leisurely pace, it takes me all of 55 seconds.

My next effort is less speedy. I am stopped by a total of five charity workers – four times by people from the charity Water Aid who are out in force, and once by a market researcher who wants to know what brand of washing powder I buy.

All unleash their banter despite my protestations that I’m in a rush, and the same walk tops six-and-a-half minutes.

The first time I am “charity mugged”, it’s by a young chap with funny hair who works for Water Aid, a charity which aims to improve water supplies in Third World countries. Fair enough. But not today, I say.

Clearly he doesn’t take no for an answer and he persists. Wants to know my name and where I live, and when I ask to have a leaflet about his cause he says he can’t give me one without me first giving him some personal details, including my e-mail address.

Further up the street I endure a similar encounter with a different charity worker who, it must be said, is so nifty at spinning his clipboard around on a single finger you think he’d be better off on Britain’s Got Talent than on Pride Hill.

Again I say “not now” and as I walk away he utters something under his breath, which I ask him to repeat.

“We live in a rich area and a bit of cheek goes a long way,” he says.

Charity collectors and their ilk are not beggars. Let that be clear. But sometimes it’s hard not to feel put upon, being caught off guard by a man wearing a snazzy badge.

How do their advances make us feel? Let me see: guilt initially (that I appear not to care for given charity), followed by awkwardness (that I haven’t been more responsive), agitated and defensive (because some won’t take no for an answer), followed finally by anger (that I am being lambasted by someone who pitches an honourably charitable cause with the kind of technique normally adopted by a commercial door-to-door salesman).

At least the bloke in the technicolor dreamcoat who does tricks with balloons, and the accordion player who fills the air with melancholy with his version of Elvis’s Wooden Heart, don’t make you feel awkward in a public place.

There are other charity and sales types at work on Pride Hill and it might be less complicated to just smile, put your hand in your pocket and furnish them with small change. But isn’t this precisely the kind of reaction many of them thrive on?

I watch as one shopper, Liz Campbell-Jones from Bomere Heath, is confronted by a “charity mugger” on Pride Hill – and she’s having none of it. Apparently she is asked for personal details she believes could leave her vulnerable.

Angry

“They are right in your face,” she says later, still clearly angry.

“I think about my elderly mum, and because she would not have the gumption to say go away she could quite easily be drawn into it, giving personal details.”

Workers in the Vodafone shop in Pride Hill say they have seen confrontations come to blows.

And 19-year-old Jody Davies, who works in a store on Pride Hill, reveals she once had to hide in a back room to avoid one particularly persistent “chugger” from a different charity who wanted her to sign a direct debit to pay £10 a month.

Her friend, 22-year-old Jamie Barton, says she is continually stopped by charity workers, even when she is on her mobile phone.

I try out a few tactics of my own to repel the stop-and-sniff brigade. As well as pretending to make a phone call, I try biting into a pre-prepared sandwich (one for the professional, this, as it requires both foresight and timing). It fails.

I try a more effective tactic: being nice. They don’t seem to understand the reaction. So, while they are off guard, I take my onslaught of niceness to the next level and ask them similar questions to the ones they ask me. Yes, tell them where you are from, but ask them where they are from too.

The weapon of polite conversation works a treat on someone who’s not got the time for such trivia, and the cling-on leaves me alone.

Shopper John Parker, from Abbey Foregate, is perky despite having recently lost his job and quickly withers the enthusiasm of one charity worker by being nice and asking him a philosophical question.

“While we’re talking, who do you think is the most important world figure born in the last 2,000 years?” he ventures.

The charity worker looks utterly baffled that he has been asked anything remotely engaging and slowly begins to back away.

“I don’t mind being stopped,” says John.

“Most charities are good causes and generally speaking we are pretty well off in this country. But if they want £10 a month they cannot have it.”