LONDON, ENGLAND - You being served?” a Cockney accent blasts out from behind the counter.
          
“You want the skin off?”
           
Their queries and heckles echo around the Borough Market throughout the day as they sell almost every seafood product imaginable.

They are the fishmongers at Furness Fish Markets, one of the many stalls inside the popular produce, meat and seafood market in London’s Southwark district.

“If I buy a whole crab will it last until tomorrow?” one customer wonders.
          
They are also gurus in their own right, offering culinary advice to the masses who venture under the train tracks every Friday and Saturday to seek out this unique brand of perch-and-pickerel-preparing performance art. 
           

A vendor at Green Market, close to Borough Market. (Chris Atchison/ITD)

The Furness fishmongers play the game with Shakespearean flare, appropriate because a re-creation of the Bard’s Globe Theatre lies nearby.
           
This spring afternoon is particularly chilly, but the fast-moving workers are used to their unheated surrounds even though their hands are constantly dipping into coolers packed with shaved ice.

When I approach the stall to ask questions I’m quickly passed along to Philip Webb, clad in fisherman’s overalls, rubber boots and a captain’s hat.

If the Borough Markets had a PR representative, the flamboyant seven-year Furness veteran would be the chosen one.
          
“You go to the supermarkets and the fish is seven to 12-weeks-old,” Webb states. “They come here because we’re professionals in our trade and they know we know what we’re talking about.”
      
“They,” in this case, are London’s top chefs, the culinary celebrities who spend their early mornings seeking out choice cuts of strip loin, perfectly ripened tomatoes and adequately huge crustaceans.
           
Webb began discussing “them” because I mentioned celebrity chef and television personality Jamie Oliver.
           
Oliver was one of the loudest professional voices calling for the preservation of Borough Market, his preferred daily shopping destination for his restaurants and occasional backdrop for segments on his television programs. 
           
“Jamie Oliver is one of our regular chefs,” Webb points out proudly. “I did a commercial with him last year.”
           
In this age of public relations these Borough business people have mastered the art of the show, posing for photographs with tourists and playing up their connections to London’s chic restaurateurs. 
           

Sillfield Farm's bowler hat-wearing butchers. (Chris Atchison/ITD)

The George, just around the corner, is the last surviving traditional galleried inn in London, while tourist attractions such as the Clink Prison Museum—on the site of the notorious lock-up which made the term “spending time in the Clink” a harbinger of horror—remind visitors of the dilapidated factory-warehouse look the area sported through most of its history.

But as times change, so does the neighborhood.

In the past two decades Southwark has transformed from seedy to trendy with the old warehouses converted into lofts and expensive office space, new restaurants and bars attracting posh Londoners and film crews shooting scenes for movies such as Bridget Jones's Diary, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
           

Plentiful produce, a chef's dream. (Chris Atchison/ITD)

It’s no surprise that many of the workers here come to their stalls as though they were being cast as extras in a film. Take the butchers at the Sillfield Farm counter, for example, who sell meats and somewhat unrecognizable deli products wearing bowler hats while playfully interacting with locals and tourists who eat up their performance. 
           
It may seem a tad contrived, but no one seems to mind.
After all, the reason this is a prime destination for chefs and food aficionados is because the products are delectable, not because they enjoy the entertainment.
           
The show is just an extra bonus, one which, if it boosts business and maintains this treasure for future generations, is well worth the effort.

Borough Market is open to the public Friday noon to 6 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.