Mark Mason

The deep Britishness of fish and chips

Fish and Chips: A History, by Panikos Panayi, is frustratingly academic and lacking in vinegar, but still full of fascinating facts

issue 01 November 2014

During the D-day landings, members of the parachute regiment, finding themselves behind enemy lines at night, needed a way of telling whether someone nearby was friend or foe. Their solution was a pair of codewords: one man would call out ‘fish’, the other replied ‘chips’.

Brits seem to reach for the words as easily as we reach for the food itself. My Latin teacher used them to illustrate how the alternative to ‘et’ works (‘fish chipsque’), while people impersonating the Kiwi accent need only say ‘fush and chups’. The meal is deeply embedded in our national psyche. John Simpson, we learn in this book, pined for it during the siege of Sarajevo. When George W. Bush accompanied Tony Blair to a pub in Sedgefield he ate fish and chips with mushy peas. In 1977 British chippies got through 2,000 tons of potatoes per day.

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