I’m not being funny but… we have to save London’s pie and mash. I remember when I was a kid on the estate in Battersea, we would argue over whose pie and mash shop was the best. We used to say, “Oh, I love pie and mash, what shop do you go to?”, and then tell them, “Oh, I don’t like that shop”, just to fight.
It’s a territorial thing: everybody from a certain generation loves their favourite pie and mash shop. I loved Maggie Brown’s — it was bloody delicious but it’s shut down now. There were disgustingly untrue rumours that it was closed due to selling horse meat, though I still remember thinking: “Oh my God, I’ve been eating horse shit all these years without realising.” They no longer exist — today there’s only 41 shops left. There used to be hundreds.
