IT IS the foodstuff that defines the cultural divide between Edinburgh and most of the rest of Scotland, a life-forming habit indeed.

Do you take salt n’vinegar on your chips or salt n’sauce? If it’s the former it’s a dead giveaway that you’re from Glasgow or other airts and pairts, but if it’s salt n’sauce then you’re a racing certainty to be from Edinburgh and its environs.

Yet this peculiarly Scottish phenomenon has barely registered with those hard working public relations people down South who have been sending out the missives to alert us all to the fact that this is National Fish and Chip Day, which of course is a misnomer because nobody, bar nobody, ever eats just one chip.

Those nice people at Wren Kitchens did a survey and supplied us with some strange information.

Wren said: “Depending on where you are in the UK, wandering into a fish and chip shop can be a vastly different experience. There are lots of unique delicacies specific to certain regions of the country.”

Forgive our ignorance here at The National’s Redoubt, but we were completely unaware of the existence of Orange Chips. Apparently they are chips dipped in an orange batter before they’re fried, and they are considered a delicacy in the West Midlands where they were invented during World War II, with 44% of the British public voting that they sounded nice.

Glasgow’s first entry on the list was ‘Pizza crunch – a battered slice of pizza' which seemed nice to 35.9%.

Glasgow’s other mentioned favourites were deep fried haggis and deep fried chocolate, but we think some Glaswegian chippies were having them on with the latter.

The highest ‘sounds nice’ mark went to Yorkshire Fishcakes with 60% of the 2002 people surveyed saying that fishcakes fried in batter were ‘nice’.

Now if only there was a way we could prove the vinegar and sauce theory ...