A frying visit
Fans fly in and queue for hours to get fish & chips at takeaway
A CHIP shop is so popular some customers arrive by private plane to collect their longed-for takeaways.
Others are willing to queue for an hour or more to be served at Upton Fish Shop, which opens for just six hours a week.
Owner Sally Shaw, 45, cooks meals in dripping on a huge coal-fired range and uses a 66-year-old batter recipe.
She bought the chippy at auction in 2005 and can’t believe its popularity.
Sally said: “People will queue all down the street. If someone tells me they have been queuing for half an hour I cheekily tell them that doesn’t sound too bad.
“It has become a bit of a social event, people bring their camping chairs and sit and have a chat while waiting.
“People come from Leicester, from North Yorkshire, from all over the place.”
The takeaway, in Gainsborough, Lincs, which opened in 1948, has fans who even fly in to a nearby airstrip to use it.
Janet Gillespie, 74, who has worked there for 52 years, adds: “The customers are like friends. I have never heard a bad word or complaint.”
She vowed to the chippy’s founder Kathleen Longden that she’d work there when she was just eight. Janet said: “It is the best decision I ever made.”