YOUR local chippie may have added to its menu over the last few years with delights such as the battered Mars Bar, but good old fish and chips are as popular as ever.

And for chippie owners Alan Clark and Helen Houghton, creating the perfect take-away remains a skill that takes years of perfecting.

Now they are pitting their wits against others from across the country by entering the Trawlerman, in the West Swindon Centre, into the 2002 Chip Shop of the Year competition.

The shop opened in 1983 and now employs 22 staff. It serves more than 1,500 portions of fish and chips every week. Since the shop opened, approximately five million portions of chips have been sold, while its most far-travelled customers are a group of children from the Chernobyl Children's Project in the Ukraine, who visit the shop once a year and are expected to visit the shop next month.

Helen, 35, who has worked at the shop for 12 years, explained: "We have all worked really hard in trying to improve the shop and hopefully we can get a bit further than we have before."

Both owners have done much work for charity, last year donating earnings to the Fisherman's Mission charity.

Martin West, company standard's manager for the Trawlerman's parent company Coach Caterers, said: "We are really trying to win this competition. This shop has already managed to keep the Seafish quality awards for three years, which we are very proud of.

"We do batter Mars Bars if we're asked, but fish and chips are our main business."

The competition has attracted hundreds of entries from shops around the country, and now fish and chip lovers have two weeks to vote for their favourite eatery from all those that have entered. Voting forms are available from the Trawlerman.