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.
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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.