A Jewish designer who used to work for Marks & Spencer made headlines after giving the store’s board of directors a dressing down over their “crude and cheap designs”.

Finchley Reform member Muriel Conway, 87, told the M&S management “I could weep when I see what’s in stores today”, at the annual shareholders meeting.

Now retired Mrs Conway designed clothes for the company from the mid-1970s until the late 1990s. She said she doesn’t always attend the annual meeting but “got more and more incensed at the waste of space in M&S. The prints, colours - everything is cheap and crude. Nothing fits.”

She added: “There used to be wonderful clothes and now I can’t find anything I like. I felt it was time someone spoke up.”

Grandmother Mrs Conway said that following her speech “there was stunned silence for a few seconds and then thunderous applause”.

Mrs Conway believes M&S designs took a downturn when they got rid of UK manufacturers.

“I urged them to go back to the drawing board and bring back their core customers,” she said.

Britain’s biggest clothing retailer announced a 0.4 per cent drop in takings from general merchandise at the meeting and a 2.2 per cent drop in shares to 535p.