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I take Mahatma Off to Them.


If you held me at gunpoint and asked what my favourite rhyming Indian restaurant name was, I’d have to say the Gandhi, Sandy. 

 

It’s up against stiff competition, to be fair. The Ravi Shankar, Bognor only misses out through being fictional and a half-rhyme at that. Despite the photograph finish, The Gandhi, Sandy wears the crown; whoever came up with it deserves a mention in the New Year Honours List.

I spotted the sign for it eight years ago, whilst posing for photographs to promote Glyn's and my sitcom pilot Chipped, Battered and Burgered. The piece was set in a chip shop in the early 1980s for which we needed a suitably old-fashioned backdrop. Glyn’s dad (who runs the Town Fryer, Hitchin) had just taken on a shop in Sandy that was perfect for the job. It only took half an hour’s snapping and a little subsequent Photoshopping to transform Bedfordshire’s branch of the Town Fryer into the Fiscothèque in our script.


There was us, thinking our made-up name was good, only to be scuppered by one that existed in real life. Sometimes, you just can’t write it. 

 
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