Sydney Green

Sydney Green – always known as Sid – spent a lifetime in the fish and chips business. And for many years he lived on them – literally – having fish and chips twice a day.

Mr Green, who has died aged 76, was born on the Gipton Estate in Leeds, and while at Coldcotes School he earned pocket money selling fish and chips from the back of a mobile chippy.

It was then that he set his heart on owning his own business, but it would be some years before he was able to buy one.

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First came two years in the Army, doing his National Service, and after that he got a job at the Hemmingway Brewery in York Road as a delivery man.

Saturday nights he went dancing, and at the Scala Dance Hall in Lands Lane he met Joyce Buckle.

They were married 1957 when he was 21.

Mr Green worked for the Co-Op bakery and Northern Veneers, but getting into the fish and chips business was what he really wanted to do, and eventually, in 1974, he had the money and the opportunity to buy one.

It was a take-away with a little café in Tower Street, Harrogate, where Mrs Green serving the eat-in customers.

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They business was successful and Mr Green enjoyed the light-hearted banter that a genial fish frier has with his regulars.

In 1980 he bought Grangefield Fisheries in Richardshaw Lane, Pudsey, and after a couple of years there, bought a business in Beeston that became known as Sid’s Chippy.

Once again, he won customers’ loyalty and friendship, and the business continues to trade – it is now being run by the couple’s son, Michael.

In the intervals between one opening session and the next, each with its routine of preparations, frying and cleaning up, Mr Green kept a large garden trim, and more recently built a model railway layout in his conservatory at home, resuming an interest in 00 gauge models.

He is survived by his wife, their two sons Michael and Philip, five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

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