Despite a ceaseless quest for the secondary purchase, and organising a fictional festival solely to boost sales, Ramesh seems to genuinely have his customers' interests at heart.
He is popular with fellow shopkeepers; chairing the local Traders' Association, and also won the coveted 'Shopkeeper of the Year Award' in the Small-to-Medium Retail Concern category in Series 2.
This initially progresses slowly due to Ramesh's nerves and unwillingness to commit following his wife's death, but they eventually become engaged and then married in series 9.
Despite his easy-going nature, Dave is periodically beset by anxieties about his job and status; suffering a full scale breakdown, brought on by Ramesh's mother-in-law.
Alok has a vastly over inflated sense of his abilities as a businessman and his ventures such as the Lembit Opik Pita Heater invariably meet with disaster.
This was particularly apparent in the episode "The Wrath Of Khan" when Alok's decision to install a Slush Machine led to a full scale retail war with the cafe at the Lenzie Leisuredome.
Sanjay Majhu Ramesh's youngest son is in his late teens when the show begins, and shares his brother's disdain for the world of low-return retail.
However, unlike Alok, this is due to teenage apathy and general surliness rather than a desire to pursue a high flying business career.
He also follows fashion and cultural fads to an extreme degree, dismissing anything he believes is no longer a hot trend as "hashtag pure granny-fied".
However, in the episode "A Song for Lenzie", it is revealed Sanjay has never attended any of these courses, and has actually spent his time busking in an attempt to develop a music career.
However, in the opening episode of series 11, they break up, having struggled to make the transition from friendship to relationship - and because Grebo has been paying to watch explicit videos of someone called "Backshop Boy" on OnlyFans (who is actually Alok, although Sanjay fails to realise this).
Malcolm has something of a verbal tic where she will only use half a phrase or expression; for example, describing herself as "Happy as" or "Excited as", or dismissing an insult as "Water off" [a duck's back].
[7] On 23 April 2019 Sanjeev Kohli announced that a live show would be taking place throughout the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, again in the form of script readings.