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Secrets of the Deep Fryer

Julianne Bennett meets the man for whom there's plenty more fish in the sea (and a lot else besides).

My pilgrimage to Steve Akrill's workplace takes me through the middle of Brimswood, the coastal town that's been synonymous with fishing in Britain for centuries. Little remains today of its proud heritage. There's an old building in the market square with a plaque commemorating Brimswood's last fish and chip shop: it closed down seven years ago and is now a bookmaker's. It stood firmly against the burger and the pizza, the curry and the kebab, but it couldn't fight the soaring cost of fish. For those of us who have lived through more bountiful times, the visit to the chippy lives on as a fond memory, but for today's children it will be hard to imagine that such a thing ever graced our streets. Like the telegraph office, the record shop and the petrol station, it no longer belongs in our world.

But today I'm meeting a man who wants to swap this dystopian vision for something much fishier. No one would have bet that fish and chips would ever return to Brimswood, and certainly no one would have bet that Steve Akrill would return from the dead to lead their renaissance, and yet here I am, on the way to visit his brand new chip shop.

Akrill's shop is right on the dockside. Its freshly-whitewashed walls shine like a beacon of hope amid the rust and decay all around. As I pass by the window I notice that today's catch is already in and the staff are busy preparing for the evening frying session. Fortunately they haven't started cooking yet, otherwise my interview would be significantly delayed.

Akrill lives in a terraced house next door to the shop. The man who opens the door is shorter than I expected, about five and a half feet, but with a build that could rip a white whale in two. He’s a remarkably good fit for this house, with its generous rooms but low-beamed ceilings. His family have lived here for generations. "My father was a fisherman, my grandfather was a fisherman, my great-grandfather and his father and so on," he explains as he shows me around. "Even my aunt was a fisherman," he adds, stroking his stereotypical fisherman's beard. "She taught me a lot about dealing with other people's expectations."

He's lived here on his own since his wife, Emily, died. "This place is too large for me, and I do get lonely sometimes," he says, as he stirs a cup of tea for me with a force near the top of the Beaufort scale. "But I have so many good memories of here, I wouldn't dream of moving."

He passes me a photo of Steve and Emily in happier times. It was taken by the docks on the return from their honeymoon, just under twenty-five years ago. Akrill's beard is nowhere to be seen: he looks like a completely different person. Emily smiles like she's landed the best catch of her life. And in the background is his old boat. "I was still a trawlerman back then," he says. "The last in the line."

Akrill later became skipper of the trawler, and hung on in that position for several years, before he finally accepted that commercial fishing was a lost cause. "The nets were coming up practically empty, day after day. We were forced to go further and further out, thousands of miles, and it just wasn't worth our while."

His final outing, ten years ago this week, was a major event. "There was a huge crowd to see us away," he says, smiling. "The docks were packed, the papers were there. It was crazy." But it was when they got back that the party really started. "They cheered me and the crew all the way up to the Red Lion. We got a few pints on the house that night, I can tell you."

The sadness didn't kick in until a few weeks later, when the time came to sell the trawler. "I sold it to an Icelandic guy in the end. Grandpa wouldn't have liked that! It went to a good home though. Hafliði his name was, with a squiggle, like this–" He snatches my notebook and writes out the name in his meticulous, but barely decipherable, hand. "He flew over here, paid me in cash, then sailed it away. I can't deny there was a tear in my eye that day."

Akrill didn't sever his links with the fishing industry entirely. He took a job on one of the stalls at the local fish market. In those days Brimswood market was still world famous, even though the fish stocks had to be sourced from farther and farther away. As Akrill points out, "I was probably selling the stuff that Hafliði was catching in my boat."

Did he enjoy his new job? "I loved it. I'd catch myself looking out to sea from time to time, but I wasn't half bad as a landlubber. It was worth it just to be able to wake up every morning next to my wife. And there was always Annabelle, of course."

The MFV Annabelle was a little fishing boat that Akrill bought with some of the proceeds from his trawler. He would take it out at weekends with his wife and try to learn how to catch fish with a line. "She did much better than I did," he says. "She caught a cod once, that was a bloody miracle."

But tragedy struck three years ago when Emily was diagnosed with a particularly vicious form of breast cancer. She was initially given six months to live, but was dead within three. "It was brutal," he says quietly. "She wanted to fight, but it was like fighting a tidal wave. She never had a chance."

Akrill took her ashes out to sea in the Annabelle. "My first idea was to scatter them at our usual fishing grounds, but then I realised that the fish would think they'd got the last laugh. So I took off along the old trawler route instead. I went out as far as I could on the fuel I had. It was way out at sea, but beautifully calm. That was a sign, I think. She was telling me that she should rest there."

Akrill soldiered on at the fish market for a couple more years, while the world's fish stocks dwindled and prices continued to soar. "Of course the chippies were long gone by then, but even the posh restaurants were taking fish off the menu. It was nuts. There was no way we could survive."

Ten months ago the fish market closed forever, bringing to an end Brimswood's heritage and perhaps even its reason to exist. Like many others, Akrill lost his job. "I had no idea what to do," he says, with the anguish still lingering in his voice. "I thought about retiring early, but I wouldn't have been far off poverty. The house was worth nothing, the boat would've had to go. I couldn't face that. But I hadn't got any better ideas either. So in the end I decided to go and ask my wife what to do."

It was the first time Akrill had gone back to Emily's final resting place. "It was such a long way out at sea," he explains. "But this time I just had to go, no question." There were gale warnings in force that evening, but he was determined. "I just kept telling myself that I had to go there. The storm didn't matter."

But the storm did matter to the Annabelle. By the time he arrived, the engine was already taking on water and the bilge pumps were failing. "I was as good as sunk," he says, with a defiant look in his eyes. "But I didn't care. I was with Emily again."

He radioed in his position, but it was far too late. A helicopter was sent out and then forced back by the bad weather. A lifeboat got there eventually, but all the rescue team found was some wreckage from the Annabelle. Akrill was missing, presumed dead.

As he explains all this to me, he gets increasingly excited, like a little boy explaining what he got up to on a rainy afternoon in his treehouse. He insists on taking me out to the shed in his back garden where he shows me the remains of Annabelle. "The RNLI were kind enough to keep them safe for me," he says, proudly pointing out a couple of rotten planks.

To the shock and joy of the people of Brimswood, Akrill resurfaced at the docks three days later. "They asked me how I survived, so I told them I'd been drifting in my life raft. Nobody asked why the rescue team hadn't seen it." He leans over to me conspiratorially. "The truth is I didn't have a life raft. I couldn't have told them what really happened though – they'd have put me in the madhouse."

So how did he survive? "I don't know, and that's the honest truth. I remember going under, and then everything went black, and then ... then I woke up."

When Akrill tells me where he woke up, my first thought is that he's trying to tease a naïve city girl. But I assure you, dear reader, that he is deadly serious about all that follows. He speaks slowly and forcefully, as if daring me to disbelieve him. "I woke up, and then I met them." Who? "The fish people." I can't help myself. I let out a laugh. The fish people? Is he serious? "I know it sounds crazy, but that's where I was, in the land of the fish people."

I ask him what the fish people look like. Are they mermaids? Water sprites? Sea nymphs? He shakes his head. "They look like people, but with fishy bits." He pulls out a sketch from his pocket and offers it to me. It's an impressively detailed drawing of what can only be described as a fish person. It's clearly humanoid, but with an excess of fins, gills and flippers. It's wearing a military uniform and carrying what looks like a cross between an oxygen tank and a machine gun. The scowl on its face is even more intimidating.

"They don't call themselves fish people, of course," he adds. "They call themselves the Necker." I recognise the name from somewhere – my university studies, perhaps? For the first time I feel some regret for burning all my mythology texts after I graduated.

Was the Necker in the drawing the one who rescued him? "No, I still have no idea who that was. The guy in the drawing was my guard. When I woke up, I was in some kind of underground cave. There was electric lighting, and a bit of furniture, but it was obviously a prison. Then the guard spotted that I was awake and got on the phone to someone." What did he sound like when he spoke? "It's difficult to describe. Like a cross between a human and a dolphin, maybe. I didn't hear it much, because they've got a translation device which lets them talk in English." So they have advanced technology then? "Oh yes. I didn't get to see a lot of it, but they're clearly decades ahead of us."

He leads me out of the back gate and we take a stroll around the docks. I look around again at the no-nonsense iron posts and the dilapidated old machinery. It all seems so concrete, so real. The contrast with the fantasy world of Akrill couldn’t be stronger. And yet ... somehow he fits here. I stare at him, wondering how he pulls it off. Meanwhile, oblivious to my mental torment, he blithely carries on with his story.

"So the guard came over to me and said I would be meeting someone really important soon." Was he scared? "Terrified. And I went a bit crazy too. I got this idea into my head that I was in the afterlife and I was about to be judged by all the fish I'd ever caught. Then I thought that I'd become a fish person too, even though I hadn't gained any obvious fish characteristics. So I decided that the fishy bits must start off invisible and only appear once you've renounced your humanity in front of their court. It was all very confusing."

Akrill was taken by the guard to a lift, which took him 40 storeys down. "Their buildings are the opposite of ours," he explains. "I was being kept in the dungeons, so it was a long way down to meet the big fish." He was lead into a conference room, now surrounded by four guards, and asked to sit down in front of a board of Necker executives. "If you didn't look too close you could mistake them for any old businessmen. Suits, ties, briefcases, the lot."

The meeting began. "One of the board members made an introductory speech to the others. They gave me a translating thing, but the speech was so full of jargon that I only understood half of it. I know he told the others that I was the 'surface dweller' they'd captured and he also said something about it being a fantastic opportunity to expand their portfolio. I had no idea what they were talking about."

He pulls me to one side to ensure no one is listening. "And then the head fish talks to me directly. He says he'd normally kill any surface dweller who learns of the existence of the Necker. But he's got another proposition that might be of more interest to me."

Akrill tells me how the Necker have been monitoring our society for years, noting with concern our mismanagement of the seas. Some time ago they put in place a barrier between their world and ours, so that their fish stocks would forever be protected from our greed. "And it worked," he says. "They let me have a look through the room's portholes. There were so many fish that you could barely see the water."

So what was the proposition? "He told me that their conservation policy was working almost too well, and many species were in danger of overpopulation. So he asked me if I would like to sell the surplus on the surface. I said, you bet I would!"

With a twinkle in his eye, Akrill takes me to a large hut right by the water's edge. It's the only thing at the docks that looks brand new. He waves his hand over the door and it opens automatically, although the effect is somewhat spoilt by the creaking noise it makes. It's a strange combination of high technology and old-fashioned carpentry. Akrill tells me that a friend built the hut for him, while the Necker provided the security system.

Inside, perching on its launching platform, is a mini-submarine. It looks like it's been designed by aliens. "This is a perk of the job. They gave it to me for my journey back." I peer through the glass cockpit at a huge bank of controls and screens, all labelled with a script I've never seen before. "I'm still not sure what most of the controls do," he says, looking on, "but they gave me a bit of training so I could get back to the beach without too much fuss."

I stare, gobsmacked, at the submarine. Up till now I've been humouring Akrill's tale, but suddenly it has become tangible. If he's hoaxing me, he's gone to a lot of trouble. Before he can stop me, I reach out and try to open the door, getting my hand zapped by another security system in the process. Akrill apologises profusely, but insists that he can't show me inside. He swore to the Necker that no one else would be exposed to the technology.

He is willing, however, to explain what he does with it. "Every day I take her out to sea to a new location, where I meet up with the Necker. They attach a net carrying the latest catch, and I drop a container with the proceeds from the last day's sales." But what can they do with the money? "Oh, they have a very sophisticated banking system. It's all convertible to Necker dollars."

Naturally, the regular fish deliveries have been a target for other boatmen looking to either unmask Akrill as a fraud or get a cut of the action. The latest attempt was by a local man named Todd, who tailed him in a motorboat. The Necker spotted the rogue vessel and cancelled the delivery for the day, leaving the irate customers of the chip shop to set upon Todd and hack his boat to pieces. No one has tried to intercept the deliveries since. At least, no civilian has.

Akrill explains why he's going public with his story now. "The Necker would like to issue a warning," he says, gravely reading from a pre-prepared statement. "Last Thursday, at 1100 hours, they identified a military submarine pursuing them as they made their regular delivery of fresh fish to Mr Steve Akrill. The situation was very dangerous, and if the delivery crew had not been able to successfully take evasive action, it could have escalated into a full military confrontation. The Necker wish to live in peace, but they won't tolerate intrusions of surface dwellers into their domain. And they would like to point out that their navy is a lot stronger than ours."

I later asked the armed forces minister for information on this incident, but he refused to comment.

A new and dangerous cod war notwithstanding, Akrill is clearly delighted with his elevated status. His restaurant is overrun every night, and he's thinking of reopening the fish market to help manage demand. With the approval of the Necker, of course. "It's a joint venture."

We take a last look at the submarine for the photographer's benefit, and on the other side of the hull I spot the only part of the ship that is definitely Akrill's own work: the hand-painted name 'Emily'. "The Necker don't have any tradition of naming ships, so I thought I should show them how it's done," he says. He looks at me, adding imploringly: "I think she'd approve, don't you?"

Back in Akrill's house, we have another cup of tea and set up the rest of the photos. After they're all done, he sits back in his favourite chair and astonishes us by taking off his beard, which, it turns out, is held on by elastic. "It gets a bit itchy after a while." Suddenly he looks twenty-five years younger again. His smile turning into a mischievous grin, he hands the fake beard to me "as a token of his gratitude for this interview". I try it on for size, but it's not really my style. Still, I pack it carefully in my bag. Maybe I'll need to pass as a grizzled old fisherman myself one day.

I thank him for his time and go to join the early evening queue for fish and chips. The queue is already winding around the docks, and it's nearly 90 minutes before I'm served. But it's certainly worth the wait. The first bite of fish is a revelation, and in my mind I'm on holiday again on the beach with my parents, getting scolded for feeding chips to the seagulls and getting ketchup all over my dress. I can tell by the faces of the other customers that they're experiencing similar feelings. It doesn't take long before I'm planning how to spend many more weekends away in Brimswood.

The price is worth the wait too, with a large cod and chips plus mushy peas still giving change from a 50 Euro note. Earlier on I asked Akrill why he keeps his prices so low, even though he has an effective monopoly. "Necker have different values from humans," he replied enigmatically. "And besides, they love fish and chips too. They want to share the love."

You may be sceptical of Akrill's story, as I was. You may think he is a hoaxer, as many still do. You may think he's just plain mad. But you can't argue with his fish.