Comeback kipper: the fall and rise of Britain’s favourite breakfast fish

Once the choice of commoners and queens, the smoked herring dish all but vanished in the 1970s, but now it's back

I don't mind the smell in the house, but my wife does," says George West. He claims not to mind the bones, either. It takes me back in time. Kippers are part of our British tradition." A fifth-generation fisher, West cooks his kippers on the barbecue at home in the small village of Gardenstown on the Aberdeenshire coast, serving them up with new potatoes and a little butter.

The 65-year-old first went to sea at 16, and remembers eating freshly caught herring onboard his family's vessel, Courage. But in 1977, just three years into his fishing career, herring populations crashed and the industry shut down almost overnight. It was a worrying time," says West.