A press release found its way to Inside Croydon Towers this morning, with the much-anticipated results of a promotional campaign to find the most loved local businesses.

You might remember that we flagged up the campaign when it launched, and suggested a few likely candidates of our own. It is a good idea, with its heart in the right place to help promote local business.

Sadly, none of our favourites captured the Croydon public’s imagination quite as much as a… local used car salesman.

According to the release:

“A national campaign to find Britain’s most loved local businesses has discovered that McCarthy Cars is Croydon Borough favourite independent business.” Please forgive the dreadful grammar in the release’s intro – it’s what you get when you churn out hundreds of fill-in-the-blanks identikit PRs.

It continues:

“Thousands of local people from the Borough…” thousands? Really? “put forward their nominations for their favourite local business as part of a national campaign run by local business champions The Best of Croydon.”

And the result was that Croydon’s favourite local business is a used car dealer. Really?

Definitely not Croydon's admired McCarthy Cars

Why should this stretch the bounds of credulity? Well, we don’t know about you, but the last time we visited a used car dealership was the last time we bought a used car. It’s not the sort of thing anyone buys that often, if you think about it. Maybe once every two to three years. If you’re lucky.

Which set us wondering. It couldn’t possibly be that some enterprising person has tried to manipulate the result of the poll by persuading their friends and family to send in a line or two saying what a great business it is that they run, could it? Surely not!

Certainly, no used car salesman would never stoop that low.

Next, how local estate agents are enjoying a well-deserved boost in their reputation for trustworthiness, and journalists on the art of facts and good stories…

Well, you get our drift.

Well done, McCarthy Cars. We are sure it is thoroughly deserved.

And Croydon, the non-city famed for multi-storey car parks, Kate Moss and Ronnie Corbett, and the Croydon Facelift, will now forever be associated with having a used car dealership as its favourite business.

There. A piece about used car salesmen, and we didn’t mention Arfur Daley once…

#thatissocroydon