Mary Portas picks her high street champion There's a catch in her voice as she says it. This is a subject where, for her, the passion that energises her campaign, and the emotion she invests in the subject, come as a two-for-one deal. Not allowing yourself to be defeated by the prophets of doom is, of course, something that Mary Portas knows a lot about. After the government launched its "Portas Pilots," 12 English towns given £100,000 to start trying out some of the ideas contained in the retail guru's 2011 review of high streets for the Prime Minister, she faced plenty of negative headlines about how the money was being misused. "It wasn't me spending the cash," she points out, "or even me choosing who should be given money in the first place, or how much. But because my name was put on it, I have been judged on that, rather than the full range of recommendations I made in my review. But she doesn't want, she says, to sound as if she's moaning, and quickly swings the conversation back round to the shortlisted candidates for High Street Champion of the Year 2013. Such a shift is second nature to her. There's something un-put-down-able about this vital 52-year-old, a lifelong retailer who is now one of the most instantly recognisable faces on our television screens. What she really wants to talk about, she says, is how the four nominees reveal the extent of people-power that is right now transforming Britain's high streets. My review may have got caught up in party politics, which was never my intention, but the people are out there changing things. The overall picture I see on my travels and have heard about today, meeting those on the shortlist, is of brilliant local people working very hard and with great imagination to make things better. How can that not be a good thing? It needs to be celebrated. It's the best of Britain and that lifts my heart. She also has particular words of praise for the three runners-up. "I'd like to take Richard Hadley out with me when I give talks," she confesses. A businessman and academic, who lives in the Herefordshire town of Ledbury, he galvanised a local campaign to stop first Tesco and then Sainsbury's from opening out-of-town supermarkets that would, many in the community were convinced, have decimated their thriving high street with its four independent butchers. The second runner-up is a joint award for Denise Valente and Vicky Jackson, both from Wilmslow in Cheshire. One a publisher, the other a businesswoman, they started an artisan market one Saturday each month, with local bakers, jewellers and craftspeople, to get local people coming back to a dead high street. In less than two years, it's grown to 130 stalls, seven of which have then transferred into permanent premises on the high street. And other towns have now invited them to repeat the experiment. And finally there is Martin Tracy, who runs a framing business on Walcot Street in Bath, a parade far enough off the main drag to make footfall a problem. For 25 years, as chair of the street's traders" association, he has been fighting to galvanise the shopkeepers, give the street a distinctive identity, and stage one-off events that draw people in. "I truly admire individuals like Martin," says Mary, "who have a vision over and above the needs of their own business, and who are prepared to fight for it." READ: Reinventing the high street: Deal wins high street award