The chips are down for Archer
Lord Archer nipped into a chippie for his tea and asked for directions back to prison again before leaving a plastic bag of his belongings behind, it emerged today.
The disgraced peer stopped off at the chip shop in Ruskington, Lincolnshire, on his way back to jail after a day's work at the theatre.
Staff at Elite Fish and Chips on High Street then had to call the Home Office to ask them to let him know he had left his bag by the counter.
The 62-year-old ordered his newspaper-wrapped haddock and chips at about 5.30pm on Tuesday and was only in the shop a couple of minutes while he waited for his supper.
Chip shop owner Adrian Tweedale said: "After he placed his order, he asked my dad for directions back to the A17.
"He then left without his plastic bag. We contacted the Home Office who must have told Lord Archer.
"He came back to collect it last night and thanked us for hanging on to it."
Archer was later seen ditching his prison dinner yet again, to grab a Chinese meal from a nearby takeaway.
The novelist spent his first day working on community projects with staff at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln on Monday.
He is allowed out five days a week from North Sea Camp Prison near Boston to work in the theatre, but must return to jail by 7pm and spend every night there.
The former Conservative MP, who has served one-and-a-half years of a four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice, will also be allowed home to visit his family on some Sundays.
Archer's release caused controversy among local residents, including former Big Brother contestant "Nasty" Nick Bateman, 34, who lives in Lincoln.
He said: "It shows kids that crime does pay. If he was an ordinary person he would be working on a pig farm somewhere. It is giving out the wrong message."
Venice Everard, 77, said she knew Archer from the 1960s, when he lodged with her mother in Dover while he was working as a PE instructor.
She said: "I think it's a shame. I don't think he should be let out, I think he should suffer a bit for what he has done.
"This is what he wants to do. It's all good advertising for his books."
The former MP for nearby Louth was at home in Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, on Sunday with his wife Mary and sons James, 28, and William, 29.
