Frying tonight? Where was your favourite fish and chip shop?

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DO you remember when fish and chip shops sold … well, fish and chips?

OK, mushy peas as well. But not kebabs and pizzas, and certainly not deep-fried Mars Bars and battered Brussels sprouts.

Sir Winston Churchill called fish and chips “the good companions” and they have certainly boosted the nation’s morale, especially through two world wars.

No one is quite sure where fish and chips originated.

Some claim that fried fish was introduced to Britain by 18th-century Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal.

The dish makes an appearance in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist in 1839, referenced as a “fried fish warehouse”.

Twenty years later, in A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens describes “husky chips of potatoes, fried with some reluctant drops of oil”.

In the 1860s one Joseph Malin opened a chain of fish and chip shops in London.

Near Oldham, John Lees followed suit, and by the mid-19th century, fish and chips were a staple diet of Britain’s working class.

There are now around 8,500 fish and chip shops across Britain, according to the National Federation of Fish Fryers, which dwarfs McDonalds outlets by eight to one.

Fish and chips is still our favourite takeaway.

Just when the first fish and chip shop opened in Derby is open to debate, but, growing up, we all had our own favourites.

Mine was Askin’s in Burton Road, just by the Little City. “Askin for Chips” was their inevitable motto.

On a cold winter’s evening, three penn’orth of chips with scratchings – the leftover bits of batter from the fish, supplied free of charge – was a real treat.

There were no wooden forks in those days, so a pea mix left you with a dry green crust on your fingers.

There was another fish and chip shop just down the street from Askin’s.

We called it “the curly chip shop” on account of the then unusual crinklecut chips it served.

Another favourite was one near Abbey Street Girls’ School, during the war run by my mother’s friends, Stan and Dolly Gregory, the Sheffield couple who later took over the Falstaff pub, in Silver Hill Road, in New Normanton.

I better remember the proprietors of the Abbey Street chippy as a middleaged couple, the wife a stout woman