The Fish Market: Inside Billingsgate The London Markets

This programme contains strong language.

As another day draws to a close in the capital, the night-time world of London's wholesale food markets

is beginning to stir.

Between them, these London institutions have been supplying the city with fish, meat

and fruit and veg for centuries,

and are a rich seam in London's history.

But how relevant are these markets today?

And what will be their role in the London of tomorrow?

Lying in the shadow of Canary Wharf,

between the banks and their billions,

is Britain's biggest inland fish market.

What goes on here is very similar to what goes on

just over there in Canary Wharf.

You've got to know when to hold, to sell, to buy. You know,

ours is probably a little bit more precarious,

because it's a perishable item.

Billingsgate is a slice of old London,

whose values and traditions are as old as the city itself.

The job's still the same as what it was, I don't know, centuries ago.

A bit Victorian, I know, but it works.

But London's changing.

And Billingsgate must adapt to the changing tastes of the city's people.

Wholesale is 70% of our business.

If it weren't for them, it wouldn't even be worth opening.

These are tough times for fish merchants.

Dwindling fish stocks, the rise of the supermarkets

and a deep recession means making money is harder than ever.

It's the toughest time I've known in business,

and nearly all the tenants will tell you the same.

The pressure to survive is beginning to threaten the traditions

of the market itself.

Even the job of the licensed fish porter, once a job for life,

could be thrown open to all-comers.

So what's next? Getting rid of the beefeaters in the Tower Of London?

Get rid of them.

Get rid of red buses, we'll get rid of black cabs.

Yeah, we'll be well on the way, won't we?

London's oldest wholesale market

is on the verge of its biggest change in over 1,000 years.

The market is divided. Will ancient custom or modern commerce win out?

The Battle Of Billingsgate has just begun.

'It's terrible weather, Rog.'

When they were coming over from Dunkirk, they never moaned about the weather, did they?

'But I thought you were God.'

Yeah, OK, well, do your best for me, please, there's a good boy.

'You bastard. Goodbye.'

Roger Barton is one of the market's most successful merchants.

He's worked in Billingsgate for 51 years.

The mackerel we'll have at a price, a price, my friend.

It's November. Violent storms are sweeping the country,

-keeping our fishing fleet in port.

-I want them. Yeah, I will want 'em.

With fish scarce and prices high, Roger spots an opportunity.

I've already got many boats at sea at the moment.

If I can get hold of more fish than any of my opponents,

I'll buy the lot.

Then it helps me. Put it like that.

If I can beat them to the gun, then that's what I've got to do.

That's what I get paid for. And if I'm not good enough, they'll beat me.

Help me. Help your brother, please.

I'm going to go Peterhead, I'm going to go Brighton,

I'm going to go Wales, I'm going to go anything I can.

Got to try to get something. Can't stand here with an empty stall.

-Right, I've got that there.

-Right. Take that one for me, Chrissy.

What are you doing? What ARE you doing?

Well, I'd like to let you do these, but you won't,

cos you're not good enough. Right, pick all the scraps up.

HE WHISTLES

Mind your backs.

Mind your backs...

The market floor is just the shop window.

Behind the scenes, an army of porters move boxes of fish

from cold store to fish store, then out to the battalions of white vans

that keep the city fed with fish.

Chris Gill is the latest in a long line of Gills

to work as a fish porter.

I work for Roger Barton.

There's four of us on here. Yeah.

Geoff's worked here the longest. Geoff, how long you worked here?

-18.

-18 years.

I'd have got less for murder.

He used to be six foot six, he did!

Mind your back, love.

From schools to hospitals,

Michelin-star restaurants to the fish and chip shop

at the end of your road,

Billingsgate's customers buy 25,000 tons of fish each year.

Come on, out of the way.

Fish cannot be moved by merchant nor customer,

but only by the licensed porters.

Walking up to 13 miles a night, they each carry around a ton of fish.

Excuse, please!

Men like these have been moving fish since Elizabethan times.

Between 1579 and 1584, there was...

The Fellowship Of Porters was set up to establish a licensed body of men.

You had to be a person of good character

and you were issued with a licence.

The bylaws by which the porters operate have changed little for centuries.

BELL TOLLS

Whilst trading begins at 2am, fish cannot be moved

until the 5 o'clock bell tolls.

At five o'clock, the bell goes for delivery to the outside customers.

It's a market bylaw, 1878.

Porters are paid by an archaic system called insure and bobbin,

which sets a price in pence for each stone of fish carried.

The insure dates back to when the boats used to come up the Thames

and certain porters used to have to go onto the boats

and walk the stuff off on their head to go onto the shore.

Excuse me, please!

To earn a reasonable week's money,

you've got to shift a considerable amount of fish.

This is me parchment, this is me licence.

It gets stamped every year.

You pay a shilling.

And you can see on there, the date is 1878.

That's when these bylaws were made.

Are you proud of that?

Yeah, I am. Cos I'm quite...

I love history, especially London history,

and we are part of the old traditions that...

I don't know, being in the City of London.

But many believe the age-old traditions are detrimental

to commercial success.

The market's owners, the Corporation Of London,

want Billingsgate to modernise.

After 400 years,

the job of the licensed fish porter is under threat.

Basically, we'll all be put out of work. We'll all lose our jobs.

That's the rumour going round, anyway.

It's all part of London's tradition and heritage.

I think it's really important that we keep it.

550, and there's ten boxes.

Trading on the market floor is a cut-throat business.

They're either like that or they're like that,

there's nothing in between!

Right, what d'you want, mate?

-All right, 540.

-'Oh, thanks a bunch.'

Oh, please, don't be horrible. I got two kids in Texas.

THEY LAUGH

They might suit you, pal.

Tenants, or fish merchants, must source the freshest fish

at the lowest prices and shift it quickly, before it goes off.

The faster the sale, the fresher the fish, the higher the price.

Excuse me, can you wait? He's waiting and there's a queue.

These are predators at the top of a highly competitive food chain.

Yeah, 25 and the case.

It's no place for a minnow.

This is Thusitha.

He's been sent from Sri Lanka by his family to try and sell fish

into the lucrative British market.

I've never dealt with such a skulduggerous bunch in all my life,

and I've dealt with some real villains.

I think I will be next.

And tell Ramone to come on the stand, and I'll stick the bottle of booze straight up his arse!

Right, OK. Now...

Roger has agreed to try out some of Thusitha's fish.

And now he's come to oversee the delivery.

£3,000-worth of tuna and swordfish.

£10 for the swords....

He promised me if we deliver good stuff,

he will continuously buy from us.

I know one thing, if I do the right thing, the right way,

the way they like, then it's not very difficult.

So we're waiting on...

But the consignment is three hours late.

It's now ten-to-three in Billingsgate and I'm still waiting for the stuff.

It should be in to Billingsgate, I should be checking it, looking at it,

and if it's good, I should be on the phone and I should be selling it!

The 300 kilos of fish arrived at Heathrow over 12 hours ago.

It seems to have got lost somewhere in between.

15 minutes, huh? Please.

OK, OK. We are waiting for you. OK, bye-bye. OK, bye.

Another 15 minutes.

-Do you believe him?

-No.

Come on!

45 minutes later,

the consignment from Colombo finally arrives.

But not quite all of it.

There, look, look.

30.63.

Come up the scale, look.

See? Straightaway, it's short weight.

Check every box. Every box now got to be checked, right?

The 27-pounders.

No, this is not good at all.

The amount of fish in each box is less than the packaging claims.

Roger has paid for fish which doesn't exist.

If I don't check these weights,

and we're three kilos short, at £11 a kilo, that's £33.

You see? And if you have ten boxes, that's 330 quid.

That's my profit just went down the drain.

Keep checking the boxes, Sid, check 'em! Go with him.

Go up there, go with him. Check it for me. Let me know the weight.

We have to build up the trust. But this way, it's not going to work.

Billingsgate is a miniature city built on fish.

300 men and just a few women work through the night to keep London

in trout and turbot, salmon and sole.

A team of unloaders empties the convoy of lorries,

bringing fish from the four corners of the Earth.

There are cafes, changing rooms, a laundry service,

50 vast fridges, and Britain's biggest deep freeze,

where the members work in pairs in case they freeze to death.

Fish inspectors patrol the stalls.

No need to put my nose there, I can smell it coming out the bag already.

We'll take those three.

It even has its own police force.

My favourite fish at the moment now is tilapia.

Outside, among the white vans, are the cart minders, like Pikey Bill.

He's paid no salary, but works for tips and cups of tea

to guard customers' fish.

Like many here,

he's a retired porter who can't quite leave this twilight world...

caught between the past and the future.

I'll never forget standing on London Bridge

looking down at the fish market and seeing it.

I always thought, "I'd like to work there,"

and that's what I done when I left school.

The people there, the life there, that's what it is, isn't it?

Bill's Billingsgate was a different place back then.

Lorry loads and lorry loads of salmon from Ireland, Scotland,

and then you'd be here till eight o'clock at night.

Back then, porters wore bobbins,

leather hats with flat tops, to carry boxes of fish on their heads.

They had gutters in their brims to catch the fish blood.

What you've got to realise, in those days, all those boxes were wood.

What they had to do, they had to be nutted in.

I mean, you're talking about a 12-stone box a man had to carry on his head.

In the 1950s, men like Bill carried five times as much fish as today

and the money flowed.

I was earning about 18, 20 quid a week in 1960, which is a good wage.

I used to have Italian suits and God knows what,

I was always having suits made, with shoes.

HE LAUGHS

In them days, kids had the opportunities of the docks, the markets or the print.

So I chose the market, fortunately, this is the last one left,

you know, and it's seen me right out, which I'm happy.

The docks are gone, the print's gone, nothing left, is there?

This is the last market to change,

and eventually, if it don't happen now, it'll happen sooner or later.

I think the 21st century, it needs a change,

everything's got to change.

And that's what it's got to be, I'm afraid, you know,

a lot of people don't like it, but that's what it is.

I will make it, or I will lose it today.

Thusitha is due back at Billingsgate

to oversee the second shipment from Sri Lanka.

He's carrying the hopes of his family business.

If we lose today, back there, somebody's losing money from their salary,

or somebody might totally lose their job.

If unsuccessful, the impact will be felt across the local community.

If I cannot sell this fish in the UK market,

what's going to happen is, they will add to the market in Sri Lanka,

and what will happen is, the price will come down.

Once the price comes down, people who are relying on the business

can make very little money,

so the impact to everybody who is involved is very bad.

After the problems with the first shipment, tonight needs to go well.

It is our family business. If I lose this, everybody will think,

"What did you do? Why did you do this?"

Of course, I can go home,

but how I'm going to face these people, that is a problem.

Urgh, well, this is fucking pants.

Bad weather around the coast is constricting the market supply of British fish.

Some merchants are looking further afield to secure their stock.

Mark Morris works for LeLeu and Morris,

the longest established family firm in Billingsgate.

Bass and bream, all farmed, Greek and Turkish.

I've got plaice fillets there,

they've come in, flown in from Iceland.

They arrived at Heathrow midnight last night.

We've been flying in fish from Iceland for the last ten years,

and ten, 15 years later and we're doing about a million,

a million and a half pounds in business with them.

It's not cheap, there's a lot of expense involved

in bringing it in by airfreight.

You have to pay a levy on it, you have to pay a duty on it.

And they're very partial to a public holiday in Iceland as well,

and they won't tell you,

so you ring them up and there'll be no-one in the office,

and they're all out getting drunk.

Roger employs three shop boys, Michael, Sammy and Sidney,

to help display and sell his fish.

I've got the best staff in the market.

Reliable, they're honest, they're here, yeah, they're good men.

Hand-picked, each one of them.

They'd go to the trenches with me, I have no doubt whatsoever,

but I've got my eye on them, cos I was as slippery as they are.

No, there's no razors up here, cos the weather's stopped that as well.

Yeah, there isn't a razor in Billingsgate.

No, no, no, don't put them on show, don't put them on show,

Sidney, get them off.

My God, quick, get them out of sight, quick!

Oh, my God, they would cause a riot,

that is the only box of razor clams in London.

And I've told a lot of people I haven't got any,

there isn't enough to go round.

It puts me in an awkward position.

I'll kill him, I'll fucking kill him.

Right, you and I, you and I, ready?

Sid, get out the way, you're a fucking idiot.

When I say I want them on show, I want them on show,

not when you think so.

Sid, today's your last, you're driving me crazy.

Right, let me have a look.

With domestic supplies unpredictable,

Roger has developed a network of trusted overseas agents,

guaranteeing supply, keeping ahead of the game.

This is really pissing me off, we haven't sold a fish in over an hour.

He's hoping Thusitha can be his man in Sri Lanka.

-How many do you make it, Sid?

-15, sir.

The second shipment has arrived on time, at least.

How much? How many?

17 boxes, right?

Roger, it's 17 boxes.

-There's only 15 boxes.

-Only 15 boxes?

I swear to you, there's only 15.

Yeah, I understand, nothing wrong with you,

-but any way I can find them?

-Two's gone missing.

£600-worth of top-quality yellowfin tuna is missing,

somewhere between Billingsgate and Colombo.

You and I go out, come on, we'll go out and see Nicholas.

That's the problem, there are two boxes missing, there's only 15.

Morning, Nick!

-17, 17, that's the packing list.

-Yes.

The document confirms that the shipment arrived at Heathrow complete.

You know, you'd think the whole load would come together.

-You'd think so.

-Yes.

You can bet your life that if my boy says there's only 15,

there is only 15.

-It's not worth their life to lie to me.

-Yes.

They know if I found out they were lying, I'd kill them,

and Sid wouldn't know how to lie. Sid hasn't got a brain.

He's a nice kid, but you couldn't teach him to steal if you tried.

This is not good, this is not what's supposed to happen.

So...

..I've really got no idea what to do now.

I believe something happened during the transportation

between Heathrow and Billingsgate.

-Who brought them in from outside?

-I brought three boxes.

Then you're responsible.

The two missing boxes are discovered,

they had been on the stand all along.

You make us look idiots, between you, you do. ..Hello?

Could I have 25 of the 400s from Rod, please?

And unfortunately,

one of the staff didn't do his job to the best of his ability.

He will be shot at seven o'clock this morning.

Never send a boy to do a man's job, I do apologise.

Sidney may have let Roger down, but the new supplier has not.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

1,000, OK?

What do you think about our quality today?

The quality of the fish today,

um, 90 out of 100.

We'll have another 200-300 kilo of each on Friday, if possible.

He's one of the best.

I really like to work with him.

Obviously, to work with him will help us to build up our market

and do a very good business.

-OK, see you Friday.

-Bye-bye.

-Good luck, and God bless you.

-Same to you.

-Take care, look after the money.

Be careful this time of the morning,

stick it down your pants.

The porters give the customers their fish, and the market

its distinctive character.

SHOUTING AND LAUGHING

Proud of it? I'm very proud to be a fish porter.

Might be pissing with rain, it might be snowing, it's cold.

Fuck me, have I laughed!

Do you know what I mean?

We all know each other's history, we all know each other's problems,

we've all had, well, a lot of us have had bust-ups with our marriages,

we've had kids, and we all kind of talk about it.

I suppose, we are like, a bit like a family, I suppose.

It's pretty unique.

When you try to explain to people the way we work,

the hours we do...

..the whole package, it's completely alien to people.

HE LAUGHS

Seal, seal!

Look, here we go, ready?

HE WHISTLES

I think if it sees me, he thinks I'm going to be like Big Greg.

He's put that in the fucking bank, he has.

Here he is, look.

-Five pound of salmon.

-Oh, you greedy fucker.

Do you know why it's nice? Because he gets it for nothing, it tastes better.

We had members of the public, never been to Billingsgate before,

they went, what a wonderful place!

We get foreign people down here, they love it.

I say, it's marvellous, I do it every day.

It's a pleasure to come to work.

But not recently, because it's doom and gloom

and you can see people's heads dropping,

and it's such a fucking shame.

But I don't know, perhaps we've had it too good too long, maybe we have.

For the last 18 months,

the porters have been fighting the plans of the market's owners

to revoke the Billingsgate by-laws,

throwing open the job to all-comers.

Despite intense negotiations, the plans are advancing.

If they abolish the by-laws, it means they do away with the licensed porter system,

which, eventually, I suppose will enable them to sack us all,

get rid of us all, who knows? I don't know.

So, I'd be out of work, lose my house,

that's pretty bad case scenario, I reckon, don't you?

Are you worried?

Fucking right, I'm worried, yeah.

Would you be worried?

But it's not only the market's owners who are pushing through change.

In all industries, things change.

Henry Ford doesn't build his own cars,

and he has now a production line where he used to have 30 men,

it's all done by robots,

probably controlled by three men.

Considering his long history in the market,

Roger's stance has shocked the market porters.

He started out as a stand boy, he then went on to be a porter,

he then went on to be a trade union, top trade union representative.

And then he...

..was sewing mail bags for a little while.

And then he come back to the market,

and the union got him his licence back.

And he came back to work,

and he bought a business, or he set up his own business.

And that's where we are now.

He's turned his back on us.

I feel really let down, I've known him for 32 years.

The very first day I came to this, well, to the old market,

I was introduced to him as our top union official.

Um, he shook my hand,

and, um...

I've known him all that time.

You know, I just feel really let down by him.

There isn't the money and the profit in the fish industry as there was.

Supermarkets, that's changed the whole game,

they've got fish, they don't buy in Billingsgate fish market.

They buy direct from the coast.

We are losing customers.

Week in and week out, month in and month out.

Something has to be done.

I've felt on many occasions that I'm not running my own business.

Tell me any other industry where...

you're told times, what to do,

when to start, etc, etc, etc.

Things have to change.

Um, and one of the things is the portering system

that we have in Billingsgate fish market.

Chrissie Gill and the porters, you know, believe it or not,

it's very difficult for me.

One time, I was a porter, I'd like to think a good porter,

and, of course, now I'm on the other side, and to them, I'm a Judas.

Which is sad, it's painful, and I'm not without feeling.

There's now a wall, where people that I used to speak to every morning

now don't look at me, avoid me.

Wouldn't speak to me now if I was the last person on the planet.

The tail is wagging the dog, and it cannot go on.

The tenants of Billingsgate must be the bosses.

On his way home through Essex,

Roger often delivers fish to some of his customers.

Wait a minute, what have we got here?

Um, razor clams, all alive, have a look.

And nice, live scallops, good scallops, look.

Oh, they're beautiful.

Restaurateur Maggie knows her fish merchant better than most.

Maggie was married to Roger, but Roger was married to something else.

We were married for 28 years,

we did not have a honeymoon.

We got married on a Monday because that's the day the market was shut.

Um...

We had no holidays probably for 25 years, none.

Love these best,

these are nice, all tight, look.

Willies, that's what the Chinese girls call them,

cos when they stick their little thing out,

then they go back really quickly.

At least ten years before the end,

I knew I wasn't going to stay for the long haul.

Um...

The reason I didn't leave was more because of him,

how he was going to cope, looking after himself.

His clothes in the morning used to have to be laid out

with his socks on the top, the underpants, the long johns,

the trousers, the T-shirt, the top,

so that it was all in order for him to put on in the morning.

And I did wonder, when I left him,

how he'd manage to get himself dressed.

Everything he did was geared, theoretically, say, to earning money.

But the money wasn't the long-term goal somehow,

it's very complicated how his mind works on that one.

His father gave them nothing, ever.

I think on his 16th birthday, he bought him a suit to go to work

and said to Roger, "That is the last money I will ever spend on you."

Never, ever bought him a birthday card, a Christmas card,

nothing, till the day he died.

Roger has bought several tonnes of fish from a Scottish supplier.

Fish is short and prices are high,

but if he's secured more than his opponents, he'll corner the market.

It is a competition, it's tenant versus tenant.

I think, yes, come on,

let's go get the bastards, see what we can do today.

With the deliveries now in,

there's time to find out if his gamble has paid off.

There we are, gentlemen, look, it's just come now,

this is from GJ Jacks of Fraserburgh.

But there's two other people who get Jack's fish,

that's Lawrence Brothers and Wicker,

and I've noticed they've got some,

but they haven't got as much as I've got, thank God.

That's because of all the barracking, see.

Kept on all day yesterday every 20 minutes,

"What have you got, what have you got, what have you got?"

And it's paid off, because here we have some lovely turbot,

some lovely halibut, lovely hake.

Out of all this lot, we've got, um, three fifths, three fifths.

Tomorrow, I want four fifths.

If I don't get it, he'll get a kick up the goolies.

Right, gentlemen, standing by, thank you!

Most people are competitive, they don't want to come second.

It's the old saying - they don't remember who comes second.

There's no good coming second and say, oh, I feel good.

I'd much rather come first and say, fuck me, I'm absolutely dead,

I'm out on my feet, I'm empty, I'm gasping for air.

You give it your best.

Don't need to smell that, guv,

you don't need to smell that one, governor.

Use your eyes, use your eyes.

Mark Morris' firm specialise in predominantly British species.

For over 100 years, they've been a major supplier of cod and haddock

to London's fish and chip shops.

But fashions and tastes are changing.

Go back three or four years ago, you couldn't give pollock away,

you couldn't give it away, no-one wanted it.

Gordon Ramsay, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall,

they all jump on the bandwagon, pollock, pollock.

Now pollock is going short and making more money than cod.

No-one wants cod, they want pollock, they think they're doing their bit for the environment, they're not.

There's a pollock.

That's a pollock, lovely piece of fish, stiff alive,

lovely bright colours, that sort of thing.

Tastes like shit.

Then you get a cod.

When you compare that

to something like that, yeah?

It will literally, it will stand up on its own, that's what it does.

That's the muscle tone in the fish.

That's a piece of fish that's been swimming in the north Atlantic,

feeding on the right products since the day it was born.

That's a human being,

the cod's a human being that goes to the gym every day,

that eats all the right foods, it probably drives a Porsche.

This pollock is sitting at home on the settee in a tracksuit,

watching Jeremy Kyle, eating a burger.

White fish and salmon caught from British waters

was once the staple diet of the Billingsgate customer.

But as London has changed, the market has too.

Billingsgate's increasingly multi-racial clientele

don't want just British fish, but what they once ate back home.

Nowadays, some of the market's biggest buyers

come from London's growing Chinese community.

I've got millions of work to do, tell me what you want,

because I can't read your mind.

Mick Jenrick is doing a roaring trade in live eels.

Right, you want a big one?

Mick's customers would once have been predominantly white Londoners.

35 years ago, all there was was jellied eels stalls.

Winkles, shrimps, cockles, muscles.

Because that was pre-Indians, Chinese, takeaways.

That was all people could eat.

But now, there's anything,

there's nothing that you can't...

that you want, you can't have, is there?

15 quid. No, mate, do you want it, or don't you?

The Chinese are now some of Mick's most important customers,

wanting the freshest fish possible.

There's nothing fresher than a live eel.

Can't understand why they want to cook a live eel,

and why they want them big.

Imagine putting one of these eels into a lovely kitchen, can't you?

Blood all over the place, all over the walls.

Yes, young man, yes, no?

The booming Chinese market

is also important for shellfish merchant Gary Chapman.

He's just taken delivery of three quarters of a tonne

of live crab from Newlyn in Cornwall.

We've got to get it away by half past five.

And it'll be in Shanghai by tomorrow evening, by six o'clock.

Which is quite mad, really, isn't it?

Other side of the world.

The Chinese will take only female crabs.

With smaller claws,

they contain a greater proportion of their favoured brown meat.

As you can see, female's got a rounder body, smaller arms.

It's like women, really, they're rounder.

When they eat crab, they put it in sauces,

so the brown meat flavours the sauce.

When they cook stuff, it's a raging temperature,

and it's quickly cooked.

So, when you quickly cook something, it's got to be fresh.

As you can hear, they're still moving in the box because they're live.

The exporter, Jacqui Lynn, is meeting the demand of the Chinese middle classes,

who prefer the larger Cornish brown crab to the smaller native species.

If you're actually having a banquet and treating customers,

treating your friends and family,

and it's good to have something, size is big, and looks really presenting,

that's why.

The fish inspector must sign the export certificates before departure.

But the crabs won't be going anywhere without a courier.

Oh, fucking hell, where the hell is he?

This is an export certificate for China.

-To Shanghai?

-Shanghai, yeah.

Could miss the flight.

That'll cost me a few thousand.

The last thing I want is 30 boxes of dead crabs sitting at Heathrow.

Just my luck if he's got the wrong day.

The van has arrived, the crabs are still on schedule.

Jacqui has already exported between 30-50 tonnes of crab per week.

With a population of over a billion people,

it's a market which is only going to grow.

We've got 1.4 billion people now,

let's say we got only one percent who is having the crabs,

for one, for each year, it's a huge market.

Two shrimps, please, Sid!

What are you doing?

Yeah, well, I suggest you move your arse a little bit quicker.

Yeah, £30, madam.

You bought the last batch, I had six kilo boxes.

Life's easy when you've cornered the fish market.

As I predicted, I could have sold miles more,

but as the market gets less and less, so they'll come to old Roger,

"Can you help me out of trouble?"

Well, of course I can. It might cost them a premium,

but nevertheless, we're here to help.

33, how many, three or four?

5.49!

Four sixes.

This week, I'd like to turn over anything between £150-175,000.

As the only merchant with mackerel, Roger's a man in demand.

Adrian, a processor, five by six of mackerel

we started with in at four quid.

Viviers, in the trade again, two by six of mackerel, 4.30.

Upstream, 12 by six of mackerel, 4.50.

And so it goes on, you know,

they didn't have to forage around.

They knew if anybody had mackerel,

it would be the old bastard of Billingsgate.

But as you can see now, I believe we are down to our very last one.

£6 a kilo, six multiplied by 12 equals... What does it say?

-Ah.

-Ah!

Foreign people like the Chinese and the Afghans and whoever,

they love fish, and they eat plenty of it.

Without them, this place would shut up, it would be gone.

It would be gone.

Because it's them that keeps it going.

They've grown up with markets, they know markets,

and markets are their life.

Not some supermarket.

They are the soul of the market now, they are it.

Here, look at that, look.

There's a fish, look at that.

That's cream, cream. Lovely fat content there.

Better than a page three girl, that!

HE LAUGHS

Whilst the porters tidy away at the end of the day, their boss cashes up.

Yes, mate. What do you want?

If he earned a million pound, he'd go, "Why haven't I got a million and one?"

If we went out there and found 99 pound, he'd want another one fucking hundred.

That's true. That's the sort of man he is.

They're growing increasingly angry at the man they feel has betrayed them.

-Can you just describe Roger as a boss?

-I'd rather not.

If the market by-laws are revoked, merchants will be free to decide

whether to sack or re-employ their porter.

I've been here 18 years and he hasn't said to me, yes or no.

So I think I deserve to be told, one way or the other.

I don't know. I have asked him and he won't answer me, won't tell me.

He won't commit himself.

Will you re-employ Chris?

That remains to be seen.

Anyway, he might not want to work here.

He might have had a bellyful of me.

They say I'm the Bastard of Billingsgate.

We'll see. We'll see.

We've heard rumours they're going to get people in that work for half the money.

How are they going to do it? How do they know what they're doing? How will they know? Dunno.

By 9am, the working day is over.

We've probably turned over 35, 40 grand-worth of fish, so very good.

Excellent day's work.

It's a lovely scene. It's lovely. You can drive home and feel...

It's not just about the money, it's job satisfaction.

London will have its fish today. Or so much of it.

Thusitha's boss, his cousin, is putting pressure on him

to start supplying other merchants in Billingsgate, not just Roger Barton.

'Many Billingsgate buyers, they're calling me

'and think, why you cannot give me

'and why you are giving to Barton only?

'The thing is, that's the problem.'

They way I understand,

Roger does not like to see that someone else

having the same product from the same supplier in the market.

He likes to keep the monopoly. He's quite a volatile person.

And any moment, he can explode, very simply.

-What that means...

-Sure, sure.

-That means we will lose him.

That's my only fear.

Sammy, Roger's specialist in exotics,

has taken delivery of 1,200 kilos of Indian Ocean fish from Sri Lanka,

including black pomfret, trevally and red snapper.

But what's on the label does not match the contents.

Snappers, yeah? Snappers?

Are you saying that's trevally? It's something else. You don't trust me? Come with me, I will show you.

What is this? Black pomfret?

Now, you tell me, what is this?

What you got on the books is black pomfret. Why?

Stop using your iPhone, man!

I need to take a photograph, right?

After emailing photos of the wrong fish,

Thusitha calls his cousin in Sri Lanka.

Black pomfret, the one you think is not black pomfret. It is a batfish.

We must have what we want. Not what they want to send us.

If you went in to buy some salmon,

you wouldn't want to come out with them.

-You understand what I mean?

-Yeah.

-We've got to work together.

There's no good them just piling it in.

I mean, I can take it, but there's not a guarantee I'll sell it.

You must specify to them. Come on, please, play the game.

If the fish cannot be sold, Thusitha will take the hit.

I mean, I'm talking about a loss.

It's about £7,500.

He's new into the game.

He's gone into something that he really knows little about.

I think he's being manipulated by the Sri Lankans at the other end.

The attitude, "Oh, do that.

"Send that up to them, let them get on with it."

If you can see, it looks like now he's been hit with a fucking shovel, poor bastard.

He's gone out now, like that. But really, unfortunately, their headache is now my headache.

But Thusitha's fish is not Roger's only headache.

He's continued his strategy of bulk-buying fish

to prevent his competitors getting it.

After Chinese New Year, trade across the market has slumped.

Roger's fish are outnumbering his customers.

Is everything all right?

And of those that do stop at his stand, not all have come to buy.

It ain't that bad. It ain't that bad. These are today's.

Times like these are busy for the market's fish inspectors.

Top class. Top class. All the fish are lovely.

They're dry, a little bit. You can't help that, they're under lights.

If you were under lights now, you'd dry a bit.

-Do you want to take them?

-I'm going to go through them, get them out.

-OK, all right.

-We'll take them now.

-OK?

-No problem, sir. Take them, by all means.

He's just going through them.

Roger, he's one of the last characters down this market.

And truth of the matter is, you got to be in it to win it.

I won't turn nothing down. Roger is really a cowboy, isn't he?

He is, anyway. Got more Indians round him than anyone I know.

To make matters worse, Sidney, one of Roger's staff, has been missing for four days.

Look, look, look, one should be packing and one icing.

Two years working for the self-proclaimed Bastard of Billingsgate has taken its toll.

Two people working here are... More pressure.

It's a lot of pressure of work.

So we do it, three, four people's work, two people can't do it, yeah?

So that's why my back pain is starting. I'm feeling cold fever.

That's why I'm not coming.

No! There's no ice on it!

Fucking hell! What are you doing?!

He's lost it this morning.

No, no, no! What are you doing? Do it nicely! Pack them nicely!

Short of both regular staff and customers, Roger is in a bad mood.

-Sid, is that you or is it a ghost?

-Morning, sir.

We'd like to thank you for all the wonderful support and cooperation you've given us this week(!)

Can you tell us exactly, in your own words, what took place?

-I'm not...

-What the fucking hell happened?

-I'm not well.

-That's why I'm not coming.

-I didn't think so.

I want four or five weeks off, sir.

-Four or five weeks off?

-I want to rest.

-You want to rest?

-Yes, sir.

-Sid, I've been in the frontline for 51 years.

-Yes, sir. I know.

I've never had a rest. You're one of my top men, Sid. I rely on you.

-I mean it, as your father.

-Yes, sir.

-Now, will you be with me on Tuesday?

-Maybe, sir.

-Please, Sid. Don't let me down.

-OK, sir.

-Please, Sid.

An emergency meeting has been called to announce the decision

on whether the market by-laws will be revoked.

If they are, the job of the porter will be opened up

to all-comers for the first time in 400 years.

Is it the end of the line for everybody here?

Yeah. Fish porters.

Thing of the past now, fellas.

In the past. Progress.

All right, lads. It's a bit of a sad day.

We're at this point now, we've held them out for another 16 months,

so you've had another 16 months' wages.

I'd like to thank our committee for standing up

and fucking defending your jobs that long, but we're at the end now.

We was never going to beat this fucking mob, was we?

The by-laws, I believe, go today.

So from midnight tonight, you're all unlicensed fish porters.

The ancient by-laws have been revoked.

The porters have lost their licences.

And with it, the security of their employment.

Fucking Revenue! It's greed.

That's all they wanted. That's all they've ever wanted.

I get very emotional about this because it's the end of an era.

It is the end of something that London...

It's been part of London for so long.

But I get bloody angry as well that they're just sort of dismissing people.

It's outrageous.

Having lost their cherished licences,

the porters will continue to work

until a compensation payout agreement is reached in a few weeks' time.

This is a family.

All of these boys.

It's upsetting.

Gutted. Really gutted.

You know, it's just another part of our history just disappeared.

Just disappeared. It's a choker.

It really is.

I don't know what to say, really.

Merchants are now free to employ whoever they wish to move their fish.

Lemon sole are seven pound a kilo.

No, sir. Box of sprats, look.

Poor trade in the market has continued.

Sidney never returned to work and Roger's other regular staff are on leave.

Unsold stock is piling up.

The fish inspectors move in on Roger's cold store.

Absolutely appalling. Absolutely in appalling condition.

There's quite an aroma coming from that one box alone, let alone from the whole lot.

Use-by date, 2nd of the 2nd, 2012.

Today's date is the 16th of February.

Mr Barton doesn't seem to learn.

This is just a small percentage of what we took from him this morning.

During the course of a week, two tonnes of Roger's fish,

including over a ton of exotics from Sri Lanka, are condemned.

It's very serious. If they wished to, they could throw me out the market.

I said to him, "As far as I know, nobody's died of fish poisoning."

He said, "That's not the point.

"The point is, you're selling fish that really shouldn't be on show."

I suppose he's 100% right because it's out of date.

But all this date nonsense has only come in in the last ten years.

The world's changing. Maybe I'm too old.

But I'm sure there's many things I could tell them about fish.

And whatever they bring on, they bring on.

They'll be getting rid of one of their best men, but still.

Yeah, it's been half me life, I suppose, really.

It's almost part of me family.

Erm... Yeah, it's been good.

I've felt safe and stable with it.

And now, all that's changing.

Could have been a lot worse, I suppose.

But it could have been a lot better.

I've put the money and the job a bit before me...wife and me kids.

Me kids have come out all right, but me marriage is fucked!

Stay there. I'll get you something. Stay there, my boy. Stay there.

Badgers and foxes really like salmon. Yeah. They know what they like!

Yeah. Here, mate. Come on.

There you are. Good luck to you. Don't eat it all at once.

Good boy. Off he goes.

Has it been a good fight? Was it worth it?

Don't think when I come home, I stop thinking about it.

You don't.

You know, I mean... Excuse me.

Erm... One of the porters who I literally brought up as a son...

..we hardly speak.

So there are a lot of casualties. On both sides.

But it's life. It's part of life.

There's wars and people don't come back.

Is the British fishing industry in trouble?

Listen to the experts and share your views. Go to...

Follow links to the Open University.