Binley Mega Chippy: The Dawn Of A New Era For Bri'ish Memes

In the eyes of many around the world, there is little that's great about modern Britain. If this island is good at anything, though, it is its unique ability to mix arrogance with self-deprecation. A former empire with a lot of dubious evidence for the spoils, it’s ripe for parody, not least for being bad-to-downright mediocre when it comes to its culinary reputation.

The national cuisine of the U.K. has long been a joke, but it is only recently that this has been elevated to cult status via a fish and chip shop on the outskirts of a city whose name is used as an English idiom for excluding someone.

By name alone, Binley Mega Chippy sounds like the kind of place imagined up by some unscrupulous shitposter who has never set foot on any part of the British Isles. This is part of the charm, which exploded into an unprecedented phenomenon following a chance shoutout on a “TAKEAWAY APPRECIATION POST” by the ironic Britcore enthusiast account @craigs.kebab.house. With a little algorithmic luck and a slew of gushing Google reviews, the legend began to be set in stone.

The most important part of creating the Binley Mega Chippy trend is the imitation it has inspired. This isn’t just the bog-standard template editing that might be expected of most memes. It involves full-on imitation on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, even if the account only lasts for a couple of boastful posts about its wares, or low-effort memes that use its limited amount of publicity photos.

With this pantomime has followed the tributes, notably the "Binley Mega Chippy song." Reminiscent of a football chant, it has garnered multiple remixes and stylistic covers. Naturally, after the creation of the religion has come the pilgrimage, with customers reportedly traveling from as far as the U.S. and Australia to get a taste of the delights that come from its hallowed ground.

While its owner has expressed bafflement at its unprecedented popularity, it represents the precipice of a mountain that the subculture has been determinedly scaling within the landscape of Bri’ish memery. Once upon a time, Bri’ish memes on the international (primarily U.S.) stage were all tea, accent-related bafflement and bad teeth — if it wasn’t about being posh, it was about being incomprehensible, a derisory peek into the land of the wo’ooh bo’ooh.

Over the past few years, however, the tide has taken a more proletarian turn. Mixing the specificities and misplaced sense of national pride found in Boomer nostalgia Facebook pages with the cannier, forward-thinking mindset of young digital natives, an extra level of nuance and understanding has been brought to proceedings.

This attitude change involving the increase of British content on the general meme landscape has been driven by a sharp increase in unapologetically local content with a surprising amount of reach. City and county-specific meme pages with an ironic, Incellectuals influenced bent have flourished on Instagram through both their Whisper styled in-jokes and their commentary on national subcultures.

The flipside to these is that the nation has also wholeheartedly embraced the cult of the TikTok microcelebrity, with U.K. individuals from all walks of life staking a place on the FYP with a bewildering range of localities and specialities. Karen Hausman, Francis Bourgeois, Pandagirl, Jordieeboy and Danielle Walsh are just a few examples of TikTokers with varying levels of fame who have made their mark through their unique insight on their lives as people from hugely different parts of the U.K.

While this may not have often reached an international audience, the sheer fact of its presence has made for a subtle shift in the tide of public opinion towards British internet culture. These factors have, in part, contributed to the current ascent of Blokecore, which pits TikTok’s obsession with different aesthetics against the kinds of individuals who wouldn’t know what a “clean girl” was if you sat them in front of the hashtag for a solid hour.

Even though it is purported to have a mixture of British and Australian influences, its commitment to a look that a trained observer would associate with the average U.K. beer garden makes it safe to say that much of it is a sanitized expression of the proudly local content from the British Isles.

This peaking of all these elements combined has been cemented in the way that the British online content mill has engulfed the Binley Mega Chippy, wrapping itself around the lore as tightly as a cone of newspaper around a portion of chips.

The death of the meme has been sounded by the constant updates of long queues, "official" reviews and general daily updates on the business’s whirlwind journey through virality. At the same time, it shows that the craze is as much a celebration as it is a mockery, a tiny part of many Brits’ lived experience hyper focused on one pedestrian takeaway restaurant.

Although the focal point itself may appear random, the moment represented by this singular takeaway feels like an inevitable process. For a long time, the humorous online discourse about British people has been about their stubborn belief in the singularity of their culture, but only now does it take into consideration the banal reality of this.

At a time when its famous monarch is celebrating a controversial 70 years on the throne, the Britain of the meme world would rather turn its attention to something it believes to be far greater. This is our penchant for deep-fried foods, and cosplaying as the kind of person who eats them regularly: a bald, middle-aged man who downs pints in Wetherspoons at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday. When it comes to the Royal Family, only Ar Di would have ever visited the BMC anyway.