Chip Shop Championships

Hello. Just a reminder that the final of 2017′s Chip Shop World Championships will be televised on the Dave TV channel tomorrow night from 7.30. Once again i’m pleased to announce that our local chippy Chip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah have made it to the final. They’ve never won previously but head chef Rick Stein says he’s got something up his sleeve (a battered sausage?) which should clinch the title at last. Yours Aashif Ackworth. Mayor

Local Celebrity’s Shop To Close

Sad shopping news just in… Local joke and magic shop “You’ll Like This… Not A Lot” (on Floyd Street next to the undertakers) is to close tomorrow due to a lack of customers and the fact it’s owner, and sole member of staff, Debbie McGee is run off her feet appearing on the telly. Ms Mcgee says she hopes to sell the shop as a going concern and if not may change it into a nail bar. Since the sad death of her father, Paul Daniels, in a magic trick gone wrong, Ms McGee has found her career has rocketed. She has recently been showing off her cooking skills (toasted sandwiches are her forte) on Celebrity Masterchef, now she’s strutting her stuff on Strictly and her agent says she’s been booked to appear in the next series of Love Island with Bear Grills. Let’s hope Deborah does well in all her celebrity challenges and finds a buyer for her late father’s shop… Christine Batley. Chief Celebrity Reporter. Beckworth And Slocombe Herald Incorporating Nightly Gazette

Great Fire Forgotten, Then Remembered

Hello. For those history-lovers amongst you may like to know that Tuesday (5th Sept) marked 351 years since the Great Fire Of Beckworth happened. It sadly slipped my mind, and I sadly completely forgot last year also, which would have been 350 years!!! Anyway, to fill you in… The fire was thought to have been started deliberately, in a very fancy cake makers in Padding Lane (now Floyd Street), by two ruffian teenage graffiti artists Trevor Shrewsbury and Vince Dorchester, in a copycat arson attack following news of the Great Fire Of London had been reported by Beckworth’s town crier. Like the capitol’s big fire many dwellings were destroyed (three including the town brothel) and a few people made homeless for a week. Thankfully in a just a few short hours the ferocious fire was extinguished by a crack team of two volunteer fire-fighters using buckets of urine kindly passed-along the street by near neighbours and and bottles of past it’s sell-by-date milk donated by the local dairy. In no time Beckworth was quickly rebuilt and a small statue of a flaming cake now stands a few hundred yards from the exact spot where the fire is thought to have probably started. Mssrs Shrewsbury and Dorchester were hanged from the town’s gibbet the next day for their heinous crime and their families sent to Coventry on a cart (giving rise to the idiom). Then, in an unforeseen twist, a few months later the owner of the cake shop, a Keith Ippling Esq, confessed it was all an insurance scam and so was also hanged. His family was sent to Eastbourne as Coventry was no longer admitting criminal’s next of kin after so much trouble with the Shrewsbury and Dorchester families.
The legend of the town’s fire lives on in the familiar children’s rhyme Beckworth’s Burning made into a chart-topping rap single (and MP3 download) by Professor Green featuring One Direction
(Beckworth’s Burning, Beckworth’s Burning, Fetch the Neighbours, Fetch the Neighbours, Pour On Urine, Pour On Urine, Fire! Fire!)

So the next time you’re passing the town’s vandalised cake statue spare a thought for the poor souls who lost everything in the great fire of 1666. Thanks, Bill Christchurch. Beckworth Historical Society.

Strike Over… At Last

Hello and welcome back. May I thank all the readers and contributors of this website for your patience and for the one postcard (of support) I received during our strike-imposed absence during the last few weeks. Thanks to many phone calls with arbitration we have bowed to the outrageous demands of the council’s IT Department and will now allow them to “work” from home all week and not do any overtime. So now we should be able to resume posting your daily posts… Yours Aashif Ackworth. Mayor