National Fish & Chip Day: Why the national day is being celebrated earlier due to its D-Day connection

Local TV

This year marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day and so the national day, which usually falls on the more traditional Friday, is being moved to Thursday instead.

Transcript

00:00I think Fish and Chips is so ingrained in the nation's heart that it's only right that

00:06we have a special day to celebrate it. So National Fish and Chip Day is usually the

00:10first Friday in June every year. Fish and Chips was used as a password for paratroopers

00:15behind enemy lines on D-Day and the days following. And we've never really seen any evidence but

00:21this weekend somebody heard me on the radio and they sent me a photograph of the war diaries

00:25from one of the squadrons and the question and request was fish and you had to say and

00:33chips was the response. If you didn't you were likely to be an enemy and they were probably

00:36shot or captured. So we played that part. And also Fish and Chips was on ration during

00:41First and Second World War. We were there to feed the nation. You know it's important

00:45that everyone working on the home front, in the factories, making munitions, making equipment,

00:49making weapons were well fed and the government deemed Fish and Chips a nice nutritionally

00:53balanced meal and especially if you throw mushy peas in. So we kept the country going

00:57during the war and I think that's why we are something that's iconic to the UK and something

01:03that needs to be celebrated. In more recent times though, many chip shop owners have struggled

01:08with rising costs, with some even having to close their fryers for good. Despite this,

01:13chip owners remain optimistic amid public support for the British institution. It's

01:17definitely been a couple of challenging years. Post-Covid we had the post-Covid inflation

01:22and then the conflict in Ukraine really badly affected my industry. We were quite lucky

01:26because America stopped buying fish from the sources that we sourced from. So that kept

01:31some of the prices down and had it did actually drop for a while. But again we've had two

01:34years due to the weather of bad crops on potatoes. So we're now paying the second most we've

01:40paid since 1976. Last year was the most we paid since 1976. We've got a great dish and

01:46people come through and we work on volume. So everyone's tried to keep the prices as

01:49low as possible. Nobody wants to put prices up. We want to play our part but the way things

01:54are going it's going to be a big challenge for the next year or two years and many of

01:57us might not make it.

Category

Transcript

Recommended