Ye Olde Community Corner Shoppe

“We’d be better off at a Berni,” said the patronising bloke whose wife had just ruined dinner in the 1982 advert for the Berni Inn chain of steakhouses. She should have told him he’d be better off getting a new wife.

But sexist jokes and the Berni Inn eventually went out of fashion after introducing post-war Britain to steak and chips and Black Forest gateau long before going out for dinner was a regular thing.

The Berni brothers opened their first restaurant in Bristol, before expanding all over the UK. They then sold them in the 1970s to Grand Metropolitan, before Whitbread eventually turned the outlets into Beefeaters and Brewers Fayre restaurants.

L J White, who lives in Eastleigh, Hants, remembers going with his family to Berni Inns in Winchester, Salisbury and Southampton in the 1960s and 70s.

He says: “We would go out for a very nice meal in the Berni Inns, which had all been down-at-heel pubs before being refurbished by the chain, bit like Wetherspoons do now.”

And Mr White also frequented the Chef & Brewer steak house in Bournemouth. He says: “I still have the menu from 1970 – you could have a prawn cocktail for 4/6 (22p), and a grilled rump steak with chips and peas plus a sweet for 15/- (75p).

“Mind you, my week’s wages were only £20 with overtime, before tax!”

■ Which lost shops or Christmas grottos do you miss? Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk