In a small store squirrelled away behind Blaby's Sycamore Street, a 21st century shopping revolution is taking place. It is, in every way, an unlikely setting for a revolution, of any kind.

It's not that Blaby doesn't possess a certain charm or that Shirley and Holly Yanez, who are Gatling-gunning the Mercury with their incredible life stories, are not the very essence of cheery helpfulness.

It just all seems a bit odd, a bit surreal.

I'm sitting in a shop called The Hollywood Look For Less (Style Studio). It's cold. The heating doesn't want to work today, says Holly, although the more they talk of prudence and credit crunches, the more I can't help wondering if they've just switched it off to save themselves a few bob.

Inside the store – sandwiched between Movie Zone and Nationwide Taxis – are eight rails heaving with dresses, blouses, jackets, belts, scarves and all manner of charity store chic.

Not just any old charity store chintz, you understand. The good stuff. The stuff the rich people give away.

Shirley and Holly scour charity shops all over the country – usually in the kind of places where women with more money than sense might live – to find the best stuff for their Blaby boutique.

They don't then sell that stuff. That's so 20th century, darling. They swap it.

Swapping, say Shirley and Holly, is the new shopping. Why buy when you can try – and then take it back and try something else? Then something else, constantly revolving and updating your wardrobe as often as you want for a fraction of the cost.

It will work, says Shirley. Especially now that we all have no money and everyone wants a bargain.

"With our shop," she says, "the clothes you don't want are your currency."

For the woman who adores clothes and loves shopping but is inconveniently hampered by the financial constraints of the worst recession in 60 years, what could be better?

There's one potential drawback, however. It's £50 for a year's membership. Or, if you prefer, a fiver every time you go through the door.

I think that sounds a lot, I tell Shirley, who looks at me like I've just run over her pet dog.

"A lot!?" she says, in that way that demands both an exclamation and a question mark.

"But it includes a personal consultation. We'll clear out your wardrobe. We'll show you what works and what doesn't.

"Then you can come here as often as you want and swap your unwanted items for new ones. You will save hundreds of pounds."

Besides, she concludes, casually, "you're a man. You won't understand." And with that, the debate is over.

So that's how it works. There's much more to say about the shop, but Holly and Shirley have moved on to their life stories.

You may have heard those stories before: remarkable tales which have been printed in newspapers, screened on TV and made Shirley and Holly minor celebrities round here.

Their story has been in a book and a regularly updated blog.

Last year, they took their spendthrift swapping show on the road to Butlins, travelling 2,000 miles a week to deliver their tips at Skeggy, Minehead and Bognor. This year, they've been signed up by P&O Ferries.

As they skip animatedly from one outlandish chapter of their life story to another, it's hard to know whether to believe it all.

Yet it's a story that covers neither in glory, so it seems unlikely anyone would make it up.

Shirley, 53, was born in Eyres Monsell. Her mum left when she was six, leaving her father to raise her and her five siblings.

He was a decent chap who worked hard to provide for his family.

"I hope he's up there now, looking down on us all and thinking 'They turned out all right'. Because we did."

Shirley left for London at 18. By the age of 23, she was the boss of a big recruitment firm, headhunting bankers and stock brokers for six-figure salaries.

It helped to fuel an opulent lifestyle of big houses, flash cars, posh holidays, booze, drugs and designer clothes.

Holly came to work with Shirley and became an alcoholic. She left for a new life in America and married a tall, dark, handsome stranger.

Shirley, the maid of honour, paid for the wedding.

"I fell in love with the best man, the brother of Holly's husband."

They rode off on his Harley and got married in a chapel in Vegas. He looked like Antonio Banderas, says Shirley, Shirley thought he loved her. But it turned out he loved her bank balance more.

When that ran out – Shirley says she lost £1m in nine days during the dot.com stock market crash of the early 21st century – her Banderas rode off.

Alone and penniless, the worst was yet to come. Doctors found she had an 8lb tumour but wouldn't operate because she couldn't afford the surgery.

So she returned to Leicester.

"I stayed with my sister and my life was saved by a very nice man at Leicester General who removed the tumour.

"He said it was the biggest fibroid he had ever seen."

When you've experienced things like that, laughs Shirley – when you've come from nothing, made a fortune, lost it all and then nearly died – it changes the way you look at life.

So, in these unlikely surroundings – a cold shop, off Blaby High Street – Shirley and Holly plot their return.

A few years ago, they were living on Job Seekers Allowance and going to M&S, in Oadby, at the end of each day for a share of the out-of-date food the shop puts out for the homeless.

"We had nothing," says Shirley. "But now we're back. And we plan to take on the world."

The Hollywood Look For Less (Style Studio) is in Cross Street, Blaby.