AN ICE cream maker says he has an answer to the hot 'n' icy debate that has hit the city's ice cream vendors.

Mike Suthers, managing director of Shirley-based ice cream maker Isola Bella says the answer to the row over hot and spicy or cold and icy is simple - curried ice cream.

And he makes it, too!

The city council had suggested ice cream traders should sell ethnic food from their vans, calling for onion bhajis and samosas to be painted on the menus of vans alongside traditional favourite.

Your Daily Echo teamed up with Mike and took to the city streets to curry favour with the people that really matter - the customers.

We handed out free curry cornettos after Isola Bella mixed up the top-secret recipe and first tested it out on their Indian suppliers - who declared it a "perfect medium Rogan Josh".

But the spicy ice had more of a Bombay-mixed reaction from our testers.

The queues formed quickly at our van in Above Bar to test out the new flavour.

While the curry fans loved it - describing it as having strong hints of coriander and paprika - others preferred to stick to their traditional '99s.

Many said the council's suggestion that traders should sell onion bhajis and samosas to reflect the city's multi-ethnic population was ridiculous.

Council chiefs have been thrown into a lime pickle by the reaction from the public and ice cream traders to their politically-correct suggestion.

Leisure boss Julian Price went on the defensive and refused to even try our special batch of curry-flavoured ice cream.

"This was a serious discussion about giving a more diverse menu to the public," he said.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.