Pastie Supper For Rihanna

There's a girl that's down the chip shop swears she's Rihanna. No really. You check out the singer's video for 'We Found Love' and there she is, in the North Street chippy in Belfast, looking furtive and amazingly out of place. A few seconds later and she causes havoc with a shopping trolley in the grocery across the road. Of course there are also the scenes in a hay field near Bangor, when the farmer famously told her to get her kit on. And then she's hanging by the New Lodge flats, hiring some urban credibility the way her millionaire peers might purchase another set of ciggy heel Jimmy Choos.

You can see the BBC report here.

I could witter on about the subtext of the song, in which love blossoms in "a hopeless place". It's always nice for Belfast to be patronised, eh? I might quote the Sex Pistols line about "a cheap holiday in other people's misery". But I'm rather fatigued at the moment.

Still, I'm finding the experience too surreal. Previous to this, the North Street chippy was notable for a photo montage on the wall, featuring happy customers with their food. One of my friends is on the display. She and her mates pay a monthly homage, a Friday fry up. We enjoyed the kitsch celebrity of it all. I said she was the face that launched a thousand chips.

The North Street chippy is now part of a weird cultural triangle. At the top of the street, Edward Bunting transcribed some of the most beautiful melodies ever during the 1792 Harper's Convention. A few yards in another direction is the former site of Wizard Studios, where The Undertones recorded their magical debut. Teenage chips, so hard to beat. Or something like that.