The figures from John Lewis today show that its post-Christmas clearance sale is generating record volumes, with more than £20 million taken at the tills on December 27, up 8.7 per cent on a year ago.

Critically, electricals continues to be one of the major growth areas. The department store group sold one 50” Samsung plasma TV every six minutes on December 27. That is the equivalent of more than a mile of plasma TVs in a day.

This follows a blistering December, where again the most consistent sales growth came in areas such as MP3 players, cameras and digital-photo frames.

With John Lewis aiming to double in size over the next decade, its effect on the rest of the high-street is only likely to grow.

Next week will reveal how much the similar success of Waitrose, its supermarket business, is upsetting the apple cart in the grocery sector.

Sainsbury’s is the first of the Big Four supermarkets to report its Christmas figures next Thursday and is already widely thought to have felt a squeeze from a resurgent Morrisons. Tesco reports on January 15.

Today’s figures showing that Waitrose enjoyed a 28.5 per cent jump in sales in the week to December 29 will have done little to calm the nerves of Justin King, Sainsbury’s chief executive.

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