AN ECCENTRIC Faringdon supermarket has inspired a new village pantomime, 14 years after it closed.

Carter and Son, which dated back to 1850, served generations of shoppers from the town and surrounding villages until it was taken over by Budgens in 1998.

The Marlborough Street shop was famed for its customer service and policy of serving customers anything they asked for.

But a decade-and-a-half after the grocery store’s demise, it has inspired a theatrical extravaganza in nearby Uffington, after local author Duncan Saunders’ children’s book Dinosaurs and Dogfood was adapted for the stage.

Mr Saunders, 37, worked briefly in the store after leaving school in the mid-90s.

He said: “The Carter brothers ran the shop on a very old-fashioned business model, with far more staff than were needed.

“All the old dears in Faringdon would drop in every day, because there was always someone to talk to in the aisle.

“Norman Carter always worked on the theory that if a customer wanted something or asked for something, he would order a load in, because someone else might want it in the future.

“I started thinking about what would happen if they really did order in anything you wanted.

“If you asked for dinosaur eggs, you might be sent down to the butcher’s department.”

Years on, he turned the idea into the children’s book, published in 2010.

Now, Mr Saunders and fellow Uffington resident Chris Rayner have adapted it into a new pantomime, The Shop That Sells Everything, to be performed by the Uffington Players at the village hall next month.

In the panto, Gordon, a young school-leaver, starts his job in the quirky local emporium, which sells everything from apples to alien spaceship spare parts.

Mr Rayner said: “It has all the traditional elements of a pantomime, with the principal boy played by a girl, a dame, ‘he’s behind you’, and community singing, but a story which has never been told on stage before.

“It has been quite a technical challenge for the crew, because it involves aliens, knights, dinosaurs, flying saucers, and half-human half-animals.”

The pair decided to adapt Mr Saunders’ book after feeling last year’s bought-in panto script Puss in Wellies was not up to scratch.

Now they hope to sell the script on to other drama groups, and are even planning a computer game based on the plot.

  • The show runs from Thursday, February 16, to Saturday, February 18, at the Thomas Hughes Memorial Hall, and includes a fish and chip supper on the Friday and Saturday nights. For tickets, call 01367 820221.