The full Rich List, including an extra 1000 entries, will be published online on Tuesday

THE secret of bucking the downward slide in this year’s Rich List may lie in a £100 triple-deck club sandwich and a £2.99 plate of ham and eggs.

Britain is increasingly becoming a nation of two extremes, but there are equal fortunes to be made offering luxuries to the upper crust or providing bargains for the squeezed middle classes.

Mohamed al-Fayed, 76, who has offered for sale a £1.2m Monet painting and a £1m pair of ruby-encrusted slippers from his Harrods store in London’s Knightsbridge, is one of only three people among the top 100 names in the Rich List to have increased their wealth. “What recession? Not for Harrods this time,” he insisted.

Last year the store posted a 9% rise in sales and profits, up from £34.8m to £55.7m, aided by shoppers from Europe with more pounds to spend for their euros. It has also helped Fayed’s personal fortune to swell by £95m to £650m.

At the other end of the market Sir Ken Morrison, 77, the former chairman of Morrisons, the supermarket chain, is another of the fortunate three. He has added £160m to his fortune, taking it to £1.61 billion.

Morrison has seen the company grow from a lone market stall to a chain of 375 stores, which this weekend were offering bottles of Baileys liqueur, the favourite tipple of pensioners and Essex girls, for a knockdown £10.

Those outside the top 100 are also making their fortunes from opposite ends of the marketplace. For the forthcoming bank holiday weekend you could hire a caravan in Cornwall for £104. Or, if you are feeling more flush, you could stay for £1,600-a-night in the cottage at Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, where John Profumo’s romps with call-girl Christine Keeler in the 1960s helped to bring down a Tory government.

Either way, your host is in the money. Peter Harris, 75, who has a big stake in Bourne Leisure which owns Haven, the firm offering the caravan deal, Butlins and the more upmarket Warner Leisure Hotels, has seen his fortune rise by almost £1m a week in the past year to £245m. John Cook, 64, another shareholder, gained £45m — £5m less than Harris — to take his wealth to £225m.

“We are not recession proof, we are recession resilient,” said John Dunford, the director of Bourne Leisure.

Harris and Cook are both outstripped in wealth by Andrew Davis, 45. He runs 30 luxury country hotels, including Cliveden and a French chateau, through his von Essen group — named after his aunt, an Austrian countess, who loaned him the money to get started — and now sponsors the Rich List.

Davis’s personal fortune increased last year by £80m to £290m. Cliveden serves the £100 snack which has made its way into Guinness World Records as the world’s most expensive sandwich. It is filled with Iberico ham from the prized black-footed pig, shavings of white truffle, quail eggs and poulet de Bresse.

“Anybody in the hotel business who says they are immune to the financial climate is either a liar or a lunatic,” said Davis. “We are in a slightly more fortunate position.”

At the other end of the spectrum is Tim Martin, founder and chairman of JD Wetherspoon, who hopes to double his chain of pubs to 1,500 despite the recession. Rock-bottom prices — a meal of ham, egg and chips costs £2.99, accompanied by a £1.29 pint of beer — have helped Martin, 53, to boost his wealth by £40m to £130m.

The qualifying amount for entry to the Rich List has fallen from £80m last year to £55m this time.

There are 97 women in the top 1,000. Hot on their heels is Natalie Massenet, 43, whose Net-a-Porter internet fashion company sells designer brands at bargain prices. Massenet, who is worth £54m, will appear in a list of the richest 2,000 people to be published on the Times Online website on Tuesday.

The actress Emma Watson, 19, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, is in a separate list of the 100 richest people aged 30 or under with a £12m fortune. Her co-star Daniel Radcliffe, 19, who plays Potter, is worth £30m.

Someone making a belated debut in the top 1,000 is Lucian Freud, 86, the artist, whose paintings are doing even better than Fayed’s Monet. The value of Freud’s works has increased dramatically, giving him an entrance at £120m. This is four times more than the wealth of fellow artist David Hockney, who arrives in the top 2,000 with a £30m valuation.