AN ILKLEY butcher is the country's champion sausage maker - and that's official.

David Lishman has scooped his second Champion of Champions Award in three years.

A panel of industry experts judged 24 sausages, made by 20 invited entrants - and ruled that Mr Lishman's Pork with Chives Sausage topped the lot.

Mr Lishman said: "I am very pleased. It is nice to know we are the best in Britain. There were 24 other entries, from all over Britain, as far north as Scotland and Northern Ireland.

"It is very pleasing to feel that you are doing something good. It is very much down to the staff as well. It is a team effort."

Mr Lishman said he believed the secret of his success could lie with his hand-reared pigs, in the Yorkshire Dales. He said: "We feed them on a natural diet of grain and it produces a wonderfully flavoured pork."

In 1999 the butcher won with a pork sausage and last year he was a judge. Mr Lishman, 36, was awarded the supreme accolade at London's Rembrandt Hotel, on Sunday.

The Champions of Champion Sausage Competition, now in its 17th year, is run by the leading trade newspaper, Meat Trades Journal. Fred A'Court, editor of the magazine, said the judges had had a tough job.

He said: "The standards were incredibly high and demonstrated the whole industry's concern to produce very, very high quality products."

The award is Mr Lishman's second triumph this year.

His refurbished and expanded Leeds Road-based premises was also named top shop in the North in another competition.