There is a Geico commercial in the states that has a cockney-accented gecko talking about pie and chips. Is this a common dish in the UK?

Just a guess from a non-Brit, but I'd say steak & kidney pie and french fries (aka chips).

Chicken and mushroom pie and chips is a favourite of mine but as the Geico's accent has changed from BBC English to Cockney over the past year so his pie tastes may have changed.

If he's Cockney, shouldn't it be pie & mash (& liquor?)

Most fish and chip shops serve a range of pies as well as fish - steak and kidney, meat and potato, cheese and onion, etc. In the north they also sell steak puddings - steamed "pies" with suet crust pastry - best served with mushy peas and gravy.

Staple "pub grub" also includes steak and kidney pie and chips - as well as a few more exotic offerings.

Mutton, steak or steak and kidney, chicken, macaroni cheese and minced meat are just a few common pies. Personally I dislike all of them.

I can't say I've ever seen mutton or macaroni cheese pies - must be a regional thing. "Up north" we like our Holland's pies:

http://www.hollandspies.co.uk/

Both Mutton and macarone cheese pies are common in Scotland.

Would it be like our "pot pies" with crust on the top?

You can get pies with just a top crust - pub and restaurant pies are often served in a dish with a lid of pastry. Chip shop and bakery pies are usualy baked in a tin foil dish or plate with pastry top and bottom.

bd, pies over here come in all shapes and sizes. You won't know which sort until they bring it to your table. They can be cooked in little casserole dishes with a puff pastry top, or can be entirely cased in short crust pastry (much preferable). Sometimes, a pub might make one enormous pie and give you a portion of it.

This site has pictures of various pies:
http://www.pbase.com/orac/great_british_food

NB the 'chips' are thick cut, not those pale imitations 'french fries' which to me are the thin sort you get in MacDonalds.

A traditional meal still found in some places in London is 'pie and mash' - a pastry cased meat pie served with mashed potato and 'liquer', which is a weird kind of runny parsley sauce. An acquired taste. You can get traditonal pie and mash in just a few old pie and mash shops around London, but they're a dieing breed. There's a stand in Borough Market that sells them.

Is it still frowned on (or greeted with a blank look) to ask for mushy peas and gravy in a chip shop "down south"?

Of course not. That's the sort of daft anti-London propaganda spread about by Mancs and Scousers who've never ventured further south than Brum. My partner ALWAYS has mushy peas from our local chip shop (bluergh)

No Kate, I speak from experience - but I must admit not that recent, as I don't frequent fish and chip shops too often in these health conscious days.

(and I'm from Cheshire, not Manchester )

>Is it still frowned on (or greeted with a blank look) to ask for mushy peas and gravy in a chip shop "down south"?<

You have to bear in mind differences in regional dialect. Legend has it that in parts of London, you ask for "some of that delicious-looking guacamole". But you still get mushy peas.

I thought that the gecko in that commercial was from Oz.

I don't think they have geckos in London.

Maybe not, but we have an awful lot of aussies...

Kate,

Thanks for that link to the photos of British cooking. Wonderful stuff.

Although naturalized US citizens, my grandparents kept a house in the midlands and I spent a lot of time there as a child.

I always maintained that proper British cooking owed no apologies to any other nations cuisine.

When done right there is a sturdiness and honesty in it that reflects those same qualities in her people.

If the gecko is from OZ it will be talking about pie and peas. Which is a meat pie in a lake of watered down mushie peas - ummmmmmmmmmmm.
Im from Leeds living in London and trying to get chips and gravy is a nightmare and as for there being no haddock.......

Jim, my partner is from Lancashire and has influenced me to such an extent that I too now put gravy on my fish and chips. The answer is to take your fish and chips home and get the Bisto out. This must be a truly northern thing, because we certainly didn't put gravy on our chips in my home town of Birmingham.