AS CONVENIENCE foods go, the potted shrimp would certainly rank in my top ten.

Simply buy from the shop, take home, and warm through in the microwave or in a pan on top of the stove; serve with a green salad and bags of brown bread.

Not an E number in sight - just some shrimps, a smidgeon of salt, spices, and a delicious blanket of butter.

All tucked up ready for you to tuck in!

The hard work is in getting the shrimps 'ready for bed'.

Ian McClure is the third generation to trawl the sands for this most mouth-watering morsel.

Grandfather Tommy started just after the war - son Jim followed suit; in his 70s, he still lends a hand in this enterprising family firm which now includes Ian, his wife Kay, and two of the couple's children, Tony and Maxine.

That's a lot of mouths to feed which is why last year the McClures decided the time had come to pot their own shrimps rather than employ someone else to do it.

"If we were to stay in the game we had to get a bit more for our product by potting the shrimps ourselves."

In a specially-built preparation room at the back of the McClure residence in Flookburgh, the shrimps are cleaned and boiled before being dished out to half-a-dozen 'shellers' who have the unenviable task of removing the meat from its fiddly little overcoat (in this instance, machines are no match for the dextrous human digit).

The shrimps are then put back in the pan with the secret blend of spices which give Flookburgh Potted Shrimps their magical flavour.

One-and-a-half ounces of shrimps and half-an-ounce of melted butter later, you have your yummy pot of piscatorial pleasure for which, it seems, some people will travel many, many miles.

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