Cod mania

Ever since China's President Xi lunched at a pub with the UK's PM Cameron, fish and chips have gone viral on the Internet. Mike Peters checks out the buzz in Beijing.

Imagine being the leader of a very important country - for example, China. Everywhere you go, other leaders want to treat you to the best their country has to offer: some fancy foie gras, perhaps a bottle of 1998 chateauneuf-du-pape, whatever. China's President Xi Jinping has famously urged his own countrymen to cut back on such frills, so it wasn't a huge shock when the Chinese leader asked his British counterpart to take him to a pub for some fish and chips.

It continues to be, however, a lingering sensation. Press photographers couldn't get enough of a smiling Xi chowing down on fried cod with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and quaffing tankards of India pale ale like old drinking pals. Chinese living in the UK are now swarming The Plough at Cadsden, a few minutes away from Cameron's countryside residence of Chequers, seeking what now seems like the Xi Dada special: a basket of mini fish and chips with homemade tartar sauce and a pint of Greene King IPA.