There's a bloke works down the chip shop swears you're Elvis

This lunchtime I went to get a sandwich at the Deansgate Hot Food Bar and found there a girl from work, engaged in a similar mission. Our lunches were both served at the same time, so we left the establishment together, and as we did so the proprietor- a big bloke of possibly Greek extraction named Mo- shouted out 'see you later Jenny!'. When we emerged into the street the girl from work, whose name is Heather, said 'did that bloke just call me Jenny?'

I confirmed that he did indeed, and explained my theory as to how big Mo has achieved his aim of being on first-name terms with most of his regular customers, even though there are hundreds of them, the Deansgate Hot Food Bar being a very busy fish and chip- cum- sandwich shop situated slap-bang next to the Manchester city centre train station of the same name. Mo's method is very subtle, and you can only work it out once you have been in there several times with different people: what he does is call new people by a name he thinks suits them, in the hope that he will either strike lucky and they will greet him back (while thinking 'how does that big man of possibly Greek extraction know my name?'), or (as is more likely) they will correct his erroneous greeting and supply him with their real name ('Aye I'm fine Mo- but it's not Jeff, it's Fred'), which he will then commit to memory and never forget, ever, because he has an amazing memory.

Or maybe he has a very bad memory, and relies on a secret log-book behind the counter listing the sneakily-found-out first names of all of his customers, along with clandestine snapshots of each of us, taken by a digital camera hidden inside a steak and kidney pie in the display cabinet. But whatever the method, we can be sure that it works. At lunchtimes, there are people queuing out of the door of the Deansgate Hot Food Bar , and I should imagine a good amount of them are attracted by the friendly, neighbourhood feel of the city-centre chip shop where the bloke behind the counter- quite unaccountably- knows their name.

Of course, Mo only knows their name because he called them something else first. But he pulls off this ruse so subtly that most people don't remember the time they first came in and were addressed by their Hot Food Bar name; the one which our man, using infallible, God-given instincts for weighing up a person's innate levels of such factors as Colinness, Malcomality and Thomasitude, decided they looked like they should be called. As we saw this lunchtime, Heather wasn't sure whether she had really been addressed as Jenny- and when I checked with my friend Chris this afternoon, he had forgotten that he was once provisionally christened Scott. My other friend Warren is not sure he had ever had a chip shop name at all- but I am willing to bet he did, and that it was probably Clive.

Because Warren would make an excellent Clive, in the same way that Heather, hailing not from the Scottish Highlands but from the valleys of South Wales, must know she has no right being a Heather at all and should in all decency adopt her chip shop name of Jenny without delay. By making clear the advisability of this course of action Mo is providing an invaluable public service which Heather/ Jenny should be grateful for, and this goes for all those customers who over the years have called in for a cornish pasty and been furnished, at no extra cost, with a forename more in keeping with their bearing and demeamour than the hideously ill-fitting one their parents saddled them with. Perhaps it would help if the service was properly advertised. Then all those people who have never felt comfortable being Jimmys and Louises could call in to the Deansgate Hot Food Bar and, for the price of a fishcake and chips, find out that all these years, unbeknown to themselves and their family and friends, they have really been Horaces and Madelaines.

And me? Well I am afraid I can't remember what my original Deansgate Hot Food Bar name was. It was too long ago when I first started to call in, and at that time I was young and naive and had not yet come up with any crackpot theories involving secret log books and cameras hidden inside of steak and kidney pies. But if you really want to know, I suspect I might have been one of the ones Mo called by their actual name first time. So for all my occasional longings to be called something exotic like Archibald, or Zephania, I have really, all this time, just been a plain old John. Oh well, I suppose it is as well to find out the unexciting truth- and for the price of a pineapple fritter in a white barm, I can hardly complain.

Comments

[Ben]

Fantastic post - had me laughing my arse off. Starting to wonder if I look like a Ben or if Mo would decide otherwise and call me Harry or Marmaduke or something.

[jonathan]

Why thank you!

[Dave]

I always used to ring a big order through so thats how Mo knows my name and has always used it. Perhaps thats why he just asks me every day if I have finsished Uni (I never even joined) so I dont miss out on the fun.

Perhaps Mo thinks I should go to university and is subtly dispencing career advice along with his chilli con carne?

[Fraser]

This post is excellent! I have allways been Paul to Mo. I love my greasy name!

[jonathan]

We may have never met Fraser but I can tell from here you make a much better Paul. Hell, I bet (like Heather in the post who Mo refuses to address with any Caledonian-tinged moniker) you're not even Scottish...

[Ben]

hahaha well spotted john...

My moname is Pete.

Ben

[jonathan]

... and I'm sure it suits you perfectly Ben. I'm glad to learn that our man is still plying his trade, and with such unerring judgement. Maybe I should call in one day for a chicken pie with 'half rice half chips' and see if I merit a new 'Moname' after a couple of years away...