STEVE King swapped his chef's hat for a meat cleaver and a ticket home to Calne to stake his future in the town's new butcher's shop.

The shop, which is a franchise of the Real Meat Company, opened in London Road on Saturday and Mr King, 37, is confident his range of homemade sausages, pies and faggots will give his shop a cutting edge in the market.

Calne Mayor, Coun Elizabeth Hitchens, opened the shop and Richard Guy, founder of the Real Meat Company, cooked some of the products on a barbecue for a tasting session in the afternoon. Devizes MP Michael Ancram was at the tasting.

Mr King, who was brought up in Calne and studied at John Bentley School, worked as a sound technician and a musician in South Africa before returning to Calne to train as a butcher. In the evenings he studied cookery and five years ago he left Calne to become a chef in London.

He said: "I'm very optimistic about the future. We have done an incredible amount of business and we have only been open a few days."

Mr King trained in the shop in its previous incarnation as Michael Richard's butchers, which closed in January. He is running the shop with his fiance Louise Lewis.