The Greatest Store in the World is a book by Alex Shearer and later made into a telemovie which was broadcast on 24 December 1999. The story is told in flashback by Livvie (played by Elizabeth Earl), a bright young girl who is in police custody on Christmas Day . As she is questioned, she reveals that since several days previously, she and her equally resourceful mother Geraldine (Dervla Kirwan) and little sister Angeline (Elizabeth's sister Holly Earl) have been living in a department store called "Scottley's" since their camper van blew up. As the story progresses, the family deal with outsmarting staff, in particular Brian (nicknamed Mr. Whiskers) (Peter Capaldi) the friendly but suspicious doorman, icy deputy manageress Ms. Greystone (Helen Schlesinger) and Santa (Ricky Tomlinson) and Elf (Sean Hughes), oversleeping in the tent in which they live, a guest appearance from S Club 7 in an advertising stunt by Mr. Scottley (Brian Blessed), trying to find alternate housing, the Staff Party, and finally, on Christmas morning a burglary organized by Ms. Greystone], Santa and Elf.They are invited to live with Scottley and Geraldine marries Brian.
Famous quotes containing the words the world, greatest, store and/or world:
“And I threw a little earth
on the pink coffin
covered by the fake plastic grass
and said O.K., God,
if it’s the end of the world,
it must be necessary.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)