Woolworths was written off as a dinosaur this year and Trevor Bish-Jones was desperate yesterday to show that there is still life in one of the high street’s oldest names.

Despite the dire trading environment over the past year, margins rose across the group and costs fell. The same is expected this year as Woolworths rolls out its Simplification programme.

Sharing other space with rivals will allow Woolworths to make more efficient use of its vast floor space, to eliminate about 20 per cent of those products that are mostly unprofitable and to reduce head office costs as a result.

The group is also becoming more aggressive on price, across not only its Worthit! and Woolworths ranges but on 1,000 branded lines. The biggest cuts will fall on products where Woolworths thinks that it can still take on its more powerful rivals, such as in children’s clothing and toys.

There may be no more difficult job in retail and, while Woolworths will remain on the endangered list, Mr Bish-Jones deserves credit for doing all he can to prove the doom-mongers wrong.

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