If the UK can be described as a nation of shopkeepers then its populace certainly has a liking for pun-tastic shop names to go along with it – and the cheesier the better.
Leeds itself – especially if you include visiting street-food trucks like Original Fry Up Material, which can be found at Trinity Kitchen at least once a year – might be home to more witty shop owners than anywhere else in the country if this little lot are anything to go by…
Proper Battered
Twitter: @paul_pryce
Chip shops used to dominate in the punning stakes right across the UK, but they seem to have loosened their grip of late. But we did find this place, near East End Park. It's not so much a pun as it is a social comment.
Tyrannosaurus Pets
Jon Howe
The reptile pet store on Kirkstall Road called Snakes and Adders is no more – but imagine our delight when we discovered it had merely changed its name to Tyrannosaurus Pets. Clearly the owner has a book full of these for future use.
Short, Back and Syd's
Flickr: Tim Green
Hairdressers and barbers don’t exactly hold a monopoly on gloriously naff shop names, but they are punster extraordinaires and they certainly rule the roost in Leeds. A particular favourite is this one, for which Syd himself – and he surely must exist – deserves a medal.
Snipper Clarke
Jon Howe
On Beeston Town Street is Snipper Clarke, a pun with a very local flavour. It's derived from Leeds United’s legendary goal scorer Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke, who plied his trade just a few hundred yards away at Elland Road.
Kurl Up 'n' Dye
Jon Howe
A short walk from Snipper Clarke is a barbers that football fans pass on the bus from Headingley to Beeston on their way to Elland Road. Just marvel at the sheer brassneck, comic genius and brazenly inappropriate beauty of a hairdressers named Kurl Up 'n' Dye. As a business, it's been open for over 20 years so the yoke’s on us.
The Mad Tatterz
Jon Howe
Elsewhere in south Leeds, we give you Morley: the undisputed pun capital of Leeds. First up, we have a tattoo studio called The Madd Tatterz – a name to make anyone suffering from Trypanophobia stop in their tracks.
Board to Tiers
Jon Howe
Not far from those crazy Mad Tatterz are two adjacent shops called Nail'd It (a beauty salon) and Shake, Latte and Roll (a café), but the winner in the area has to be the wedding cake shop a few hundred yards away: Board to Tiers. Morely, we salute you.
Can you add to this list of pun-tastic Leeds shop names?
Check out Leeds' peculiar pub names.