'A pint of milk and a chest wig please...' Is Shaukat's Vision Edinburgh's most eccentric corner shop?

Greeting cards sit next to Haiiwaiin leis, phone cables beside the Bic razors and biscuits by the Woman's Weeklies. Looking felt tips? They’re behind the counter, whiteboard and permanent marker varieties. Or maybe you’re after rattle magnets, you'll find them near the Pot Noodles. Elsewhere, wrapping paper, lime green 'Male Tights' and animals masks are just a few of the unexpected items available for purchase in the corner shop Shaukat describes as his 'vision'.

There's even a 'Beer Girl' costume, near the Andrex loo roll and Rice Krispies, or perhaps you might be tempted to pick up a chest wig when you get your morning milk and well fired rolls.

Shaukat Ali, owner of what is surely the Capital's most eclectic corner shop, laughs as he says, "Just the other day, a man came in with his wife, she’d seen the chest wig in the window, and said, 'My wife wants to buy a chest wig'. We have lots of unusual items, kids seem to like to buy false moustaches and a woman came in recently and said, 'I know you sell a lot of things, but do you have a kettle... I don't sell kettles, but I did have a spare one in the back that I could give her."

The shop, he reflects, is a reflection of his own character, which must make him a bit of a magpie. He agrees, “I call it ‘Shakaut's Vision’. People come in all the time to take pictures and have a good giggle."

Now, Edinburgh’s longest serving corner shop owner, Shaukat's journey started 60 years ago in the tiny agricultural village of Raheimbuksh, Pakistan. One of eight siblings, his early childhood was spent in a very different world to the one he'd come to know at the age of 11, when his family moved to Rotherham.

"When you don't know anything different, everyone is the same," he says. "Everybody was poor, we went to school bare-footed through the fields. After school, my thing was to look after the goats. When I was very little I was poorly and someone told my dad to give me goat's milk. So I looked after them."

At the age of 16, Shaukat arrived in Edinburgh to help his uncle in his shop. Not that it automatically followed he would do the same.

“I was finishing a sheet metal work course when my mum and grandmother had a conversation, my grandmother wanted me to come to help my uncle who had opened a shop in Hillside Street,” he recalls.

Two years later, he bought the shop he still has today, although in the intervening 42 years it has expanded to double its original size. However, he admits, when he opened his newsagent shop in 1979, the plan was to be there for a short time only.

He takes up the story, "When I was 16, my mum said, 'We don't want to do this but we need the money. My mum has asked for you to go to a place called Scotland, to help your uncle.' I'd sort of heard of Scotland," he quips, adding that when he first arrived in the Capital he had to share a room with his granny.

"When I was young, I remember thinking it might be nice to have a shop but at the back of my mind I always wanted to have something to do with films or music. When I decided I didn't want to work with my uncle anymore it was because I basically didn't want to work in a shop. I wanted to be a filmmaker, to play guitar, I even started taking lessons, but when my dad found out he said, 'You're just don't want to do anything.' I took that personally and thought, 'Okay, I'll prove it to him.' So I went to look for a shop.

"When I saw this one, it was a Saturday and I saw there was a big queue out of the shop door. I found out afterwards why... they were queuing for The Pink."

By the time Shaukat returned to Pakistan to marry Shaheen, at the age of 27, he'd already expanded his business ventures, buying the 'bazaar' across the road from his shop. Nestled between The Crown and Cushion and Jock's Lodge pubs, he opened it as a restaurant, The Jewel in the Crown, with family members.

He also opened a baked potato shop and a joke and fancy dress shop, which explains many of the novelty items to be found in his convenience store.

"The joke shop came from an idea I had when one of the reps showed me all these things that you'd find in a joke shop. I was fascinated Fun Snaps, those little things you throw on the ground and they bang. I’d say, 'I'm going to open a joke shop one day.' When my friend Pamela said, 'You'll never do it', that bugged me so I did, and it was one of the best things I ever did."

Opening the joke shop even led to an appearance for Shaukat in the BBC One kids' series, Hubbub.

He recalls, "They asked if they could use the shop for a story line and I said, 'Fine, but only if I get to be in it.' They let me be the shopkeeper but I wasn't allowed to say any words, I just had to keep nodding my head.'

Over the years, Shaukat has become a well-kent face in the area but there have been a few dark times too. He has faced varying degrees of racism over the years and in 1998, was left in a coma when a robber​,​ high on Valium​, ​fractured his skull in ​a vicious attack.

"I came over to lock the shop up one evening, I felt there was something not quite right... and that's all I remember. I got attacked quite badly. I was in hospital for a good few weeks," he says, admitting it took time to settle back into shop life afterwards.

Today, the father of two runs the shop with his son Saquib, he reflects that even now, racism is never far away. "Because people know me I don't get it much but Saquib my son does. It's because they don't know him as well. It's like I'm now 'one of them'. People are racist to my son but not to me because they see me as being part of their life - I find that very hard. They will say, 'Ah but you're okay'. I always question them about that, 'What do you mean, I'm okay? It's just that you haven't got to know the other person. You have to get to know someone. You can't just fall out with someone and say it is because they are that colour.'

"It's always there and I don't think it will go away. People still say to my daughter Nabeela, 'Where are you from?' and she was born here. When they ask me if I'd ever go back home I say, 'No, Rotherham has changed too much.' That shuts them up."

The secret of a running successful corner shop is simple, says Shaukat, it's all about community.

"Everybody calls me Shaukat, they all know my name and that makes me feel happy,” he says. To me, it is about putting the person you are serving first, not yourself. You have to ask, 'Is what I am doing helping the customer?'

"I've known many of my customers for more than 40 years and genuinely care; there's one lady I still deliver papers for, she is my oldest customer, 94, and every morning I take her papers around to her because she was loyal and contributed to my shop for all these years and now it's for me to return that."

Surrounded by his eclectic merchandise, Shaukat chuckles as he remembers, "When I was looking for a shop all those years ago there was this lady and her husband, they were about 60, I asked how long they'd had their shop, thinking they might say five or ten years. When she said ‘20 years’ I thought, ‘That's a lifetime. I'll never have a shop for 20 years… and here I am, a lifetime later."

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