McDonald's Conspires to Keep Olympic Visitors From Real English Chips

At last some genuinely good news – London’s Olympic chip wars have been declared over. Britain’s press got in a lather yesterday when a document was leaked revealing that McDonald's had banned all other Olympic caterers from selling chips, the UK’s version of French fries. The only condition under which Olympic visitors or staff could buy chips was on condition that they came with battered fish, to make up Britain’s national dish. If this sounds trivial to you, you don’t know Britain.

This country, you see, is only just growing out of the habit of serving fried potatoes with everything. They’re such a central part of everyday living that saying someone has “had her chips” is another way of saying she’s dead. Banning chips outside McDonald's or the classic fish combo would thus be like banning oxygen from the atmosphere except on Sundays.