FOOTAGE of The Beatles at a fish and chip shop in Taunton can be seen for the first time.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all tucked into some food at Smedley’s fish and chip shop in Roman Road in 1967 as they took a break from filming their road movie Magical Mystery Tour.

The group can be seen piling into the chippy, now called The Phoenix Chinese Takeaway, standing at the stainless steel counter and ordering food with the rest of their cast and crew en route to Newquay, Cornwall.

Only a small section of the long-forgotten footage made it to final film after the makers of an Arena television documentary compiled behind-the-scenes shots.

It is being shown at online art project thespace.org, which has a new section, called The Arena Hotel, devoted to archive material from the BBC’s successful and long- running Arena series. It includes clips from 600 films.

Arena editor Anthony Wall said: “Few people have seen Magical Mystery Tour in its entirety and the material in the chip shop has never been shown anywhere. It captures perfectly the fabulous world of The Beatles at this time.

“They’re happily sharing a simple meal with the other passengers on the coach as the astonished residents of Taunton gather outside, and at the same time creating an extraordinarily avant garde film, which of course would soon be broadcast by the BBC to a dumbstruck nation.”

Tomorrow (Friday) marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ first single ‘Love Me Do’ in what proved to be the first of a string of hits seeing the group net 20 number ones.

The original version of Magical Mystery Tour was aired on Boxing Day 1967 but the re-mastered version will feature on BBC2 this Saturday (October 6) at 9.45pm.

Watch the footage by clicking here.