He’s still going strong after 60 years and half a million portions of chips

While most people his age have been retired for the best part of three decades, 91-year-old British Cypriot John Panayis is the United Kingdom’s oldest chip shop owner and is still serving up fish suppers.

More than 60 years in the food industry have not dampened Panayis’ appetite to work seven-hour shifts five days a week, with the nonagenarian a stalwart at Nick’s Plaice, in the south midlands town of Northampton.

He had bought the chippy back in 2009, when he was positively a spring chicken at 76, and handed the business over to his son Nick five years ago with the plan of stepping back.

However, he missed the job so much, and was so bored at home, that he made a swift and permanent return to frying fish.

Now, he vows to carry on for as long as he physically can, saying he “can’t do retirement”.

“I found I couldn’t do retirement. How many times can you really mow the lawn and trim the roses? I’ve never been one to be stuck inside the house. I only retired for a couple of months before I came back. I’ve got to be with people and the work keeps your mind active,” he said.

“I like coming here and I like the customers, and they support us and I am very grateful for that.”
It is the “right wine” that he says he believes is the key to his longevity, adding, “I think I’ve been ill once my whole life.”

That, combined with eating his 84-year-old wife Andrea’s cooking, combined with fish and chips at least twice a week, sometimes even for breakfast, is what keeps him going.

Panayis first arrived in the UK from Cyprus in 1950 at the age of just 17, and during a career which has spanned nearly three quarters of a century has owned restaurants in both Northampton and in Hereford.
He opened Northampton’s first French restaurant, as well as a coffee shop and a nightclub in the town, before finally opening his current establishment almost 16 years ago.

“The shop has been in the family since 2009 but I used to run restaurants before. We started up with my son being the co-owner but last year I bought back into it. I’ve been in the hospitality business since 1950, ever since I came from Cyprus,” he said.

He added that he has “never been out of work”, but said that of his friends around his age, he is the only one still in a job.

“I certainly don’t know of anyone my age who is working. Most of them are suffering from their legs and backs. I know friends of mine in the catering business … They retired, they can’t work now. Or they’re dead,” he said.

He, however, regularly hauls 20-kilogram sacks of potatoes around his shop, and said “I don’t know what it’s like” to not have a job.

“I always joked with my family if I came back after I died, I’d probably be a fish. I am 91, I’ll be 92 in March. I’m a day older than I was yesterday, the 91 or the 92 doesn’t matter. Why grow old? I never say ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I can’t do that’.”

He added, “if you retire, you retire from living. Life doesn’t end when you’re 65”.

His son Nick, one of his four children, said Panayis is “brilliant” and “gives us all inspiration”.
“He has always been a good cook and all the customers love him.”