BAKED beans, loo rolls, pair of jeans, suit for work. We now buy more clothes from ASDA than we do from M&S, cheerfully slinging our items into the trolley along with the rest of the week's shop.

Twenty years ago it would have been unthinkable - and equally unthinkable that anything could challenge the apparently untouchable M&S.

But a quick look at any ASDA clothing section and you begin to understand why...

Overwhelmingly, the appeal is the price. If you can get a pair of jeans for £4, a white shirt for £3.50 or a child's T shirt for £1.50, then of course you're going to be tempted. Amazingly, many of the prices seem lower than when the George at ASDA range was launched 14 years ago.

The quality varies. Some styles seem skimpy but there's a lot of pure cotton and some real bargains. Under the enthusiastic guidance of George clothing supervisor Janice Dunn, we dived into the rails at ASDA's Bishop Auckland store.

BEST BUYS

Women's suit jacket £12, trousers or lined skirt £7, three quarter sleeve poly cotton white shirt £3.50. For £22.50, you could get a complete outfit for work. Finish it off with black leather court shoes £14 - less than half the price of M&S - or flat leather shoes £10.

Jeans £4

Jersey top £2

Fashion vest top £8

Denim fitted jacket in this season's lilac £26

WE DIDN'T LIKE

Cardigan £8 - this was acrylic and seemed thin and cheap and doomed to get instantly shapeless.

MENSWEAR

Seemed to have even better bargains than womenswear - lots of T-shirts, chinos and trousers that looked really good.

Jeans £4

White shirt £3

Suit for £34 - jacket £27, trousers £7

Leather Oxford shoes £12

T-shirt £4

Shirts £9 for two

KIDSWEAR

This was the best of all. If you have a large family and clothes are going to have a long and happy life as hand-me-downs, then there is a great deal of sense in spending a lot of money and paying the best quality. But most children will have outgrown their clothes before they wear them out, or leave their jumpers on the bus, so cheap and cheerful makes a lot of sense.

Schoolwear is a fraction of the price of M&S and no, the quality isn't quite the same, but it's not at all bad.

Skirts from £3

Shirts from £3 for two

Teflon-coated trousers from £4

Sweatshirts from £2

Jumpers from £4

Football boots £12

School shoes £9 - £2 cheaper than 14 years ago

Other children's bargains include

Toddler's fleecy duffle coat £6

Toddler's jeans £2

Pack of seven of bodysuits £5

And yes of course there's lots of stuff we wouldn't be seen dead in. But that goes for M&S too.

A top Italian designer I once interviewed bought most of her shoes from very expensive shops back in Italy. But at home in Harrogate, she often popped round to ASDA and got some from George.

According to Janice Dunn, most customers are young families who buy for their children and the end up buying for the rest of the family too. The store is also a boon for youngsters starting out in their first job, who can look the part without spending their entire first wages.

" We have new stock coming in all the time so we always have the basics but there's usually something new to see as well."

Unlike many other cheap chains - but like M&S - they also carry a good range of sizes. " Most lines are available in 10 to 20, but quite a few are also go from size 8 to 22. Menswear goes from small to XL and we're just introducing some XXL, so we can fit most people."

Marks and Spencer started out cheap and cheerful, then went up market and lost its way a bit. We all want it to get back on track and do what it used to do so well.

But in the meantime ASDA is competing hard - and, at the very least, is worth a look. Sometimes, just sometimes, the signs are clear to see.

Fourteen years ago ASDA launched their new George clothing range in just five stores across the country, including Harrogate.

George Davies had led a High Street revolution when he founded Next, making it an instant success and, in the process, changing the way we dressed. He left Next and the George Davies Partnership was given the task of inventing supermarket style. Although the collection was, and still is, named after George, it was largely the work of his wife Liz.

Ironically, George then left ASDA to develop the Per Una range for Marks and Spencer - one of their few successes in recent years.

In Harrogate on that first day of George, the idea of buying your clothes in supermarkets was still so new that shoppers were baffled at the thought of it. But once they started looking at the clothes, their attitudes changed - mainly because of the prices.

Then, I said the clothes were interesting, " not exciting but still acceptable. The quality's reasonable, but way short of Marks and Spencer but at those prices you're not being robbed."

And it was all so easy. If you wanted to get the kids kitted out for the holidays, or your husband asked for some shirts or you just needed a few cheap and cheerful T-shirts, there was no need for a special trip. It could all be done, so easily and cheaply, with the weekly grocery shop.

So obvious now, but revolutionary then.

I predicted that the next big sellers would be men's shirts, casual fashions and childrenswear, and that other stores would soon be following suit.

" It could be the dawn of a new era," I concluded.

Well, it's not very often I get to say this, so I can't resist it... I told you so.