This Wednesday afternoon I did something totally out of character: I went for a stroll down the closest thing that my district of South London has to a high street. For fun. And things began surprisingly well. Having made it, intact, past the ASBO of teenagers who lurk outside Chicken Express between the hours of 4pm and 11pm, and the bottleneck of middle-aged drunks who block the pavement outside William Hill between the hours of 7am and 11pm, I popped into a convenience store to buy a newspaper.

But here, not for the first time — a manager once refused to let me use his phone to report a mugging to the police — things went awry. I was required to hang around, shifting weight from one leg to another, while the cashier concluded a long and angry telephone conversation with a relative in Uttar Pradesh. A request for a copy of The Times produced the remark “quarter past four”. And it eventually transpired they only had the Express in stock. Finally, a visit to a nearby Portuguese café, to absorb the exciting news (on page 27) that OK! magazine is launching a German edition, was marred by an episode of a Portuguese soap being blasted at customers in Dolby Surround Sound. I abandoned the newspaper and cappuccino to return to the peace of my flat, which, incidentally, is on the market, should anyone fancy the sound of it.

The field trip had been inspired by the novelist Joan Brady, who recently made headlines on being paid £115,000 after suffering a degenerative nerve disease allegedly caused by toxic fumes from Conkers, an “environmentally friendly” shoe shop in Devon. For me, the story — Conkers, in its settlement, denied liability — illustrated a simple but important point: just because you're a small independent retailer, it doesn't mean you can't be evil.

There's a popular view nowadays that small is good and big is bad. This, in turn, feeds an even more widely held view that the increasing homogeneousness of the British high street is something to be resisted. Ever since the New Economics Foundation published a report saying that 40 per cent of them are “clones”, complaining about new branches of Gap, Boots and Starbucks feeding customers a sickly diet of lattés and Kenny G has become as common a British pastime as bleating about the weather.

I object to that viewpoint on so many fronts that it's hard to know where to begin. Does it matter to shoppers in Watford that their main shopping thoroughfare resembles the high street in Inverness? Isn't your average branch of Boots a nicer place to be than your average independent Happy Shopper? Does it not count that the arrival of Starbucks has created business for independent coffee shops, that the opening of a branch of Tesco can regenerate an entire area? And is it really true that independent retailers have character? One independent Indian convenience store/Portuguese café/fried chicken outlet seems much like any other to me.

However, if I were required to be succinct on the issue, I would outline two main objections, the first of which is that I simply do not believe that the golden age of the British high street, which saw old ladies in aprons running sweet shops, red-faced butchers saving favourite customers the best bits of rump, and strapping young men ferrying loaves of bread on bikes, ever really existed.

My mother shopped with independent retailers in the West Midlands in the Seventies and Eighties — more out of necessity than choice — and the experience was as enjoyable as sipping diesel. The shops frequently didn't have what you were looking for, proprietors would often try to fob you off with inferior products, and every retail transaction ended with a haggle as long and bitter as any negotiation conducted between the opposing parties of Northern Ireland. Give me a shiny branch of Tesco any day.

My second objection is that complaints about high street homogeneity often come from a position of privilege and snobbery. Just take a look at who has been moaning most over the past year: the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, which persuaded Sir Terence Conran to lead a “Commission on Retail Conservation”, and His Highness, the eco-toff Zac Goldsmith, who recently launched a campaign to stop the “cloning” of high streets in Richmond. If you actually examine what they've said — which is difficult, as they're too posh to actually part their lips when they speak — their message boils down to this: we don't want to look like the rest of plebby Britain.

Frankly, large parts of the country would love to have their problem. Bob Lane, chief executive of North Northants Development Company, which is managing the expansion of the town of Corby, put it best last December when he was quoted in the Daily Express, as it happens, saying: “There has been a lot of talk about ‘clone towns' but I'm very happy for Corby to be a clone town. That would be a success. The town used to be full of £1 shops, but we are really trying to attract some of the big high street names.”

Similarly, not only do I dream of a day when I can walk home without tripping over a Police Incident sign or a London Tonight camera crew hovering around the scene of another stabbing, but of a day when one of the four fried chicken outlets near me is replaced by a McDonald's, when one of the four Indian convenience stores is replaced by a Tesco or a Sainsbury's and when one of the four Portuguese fleapits that masquerade as cafés is replaced by Starbucks.

I never thought I would write these words, but it would be a privilege to sip coffee while being force-fed Kenny G.

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