Alex Kendall and Bill Gates enjoy their meals as they are driven around Islington

YOU’RE in a driverless car, you’re in London, and you’re Bill Gates, Microsoft’s billionaire founder. Where do you go first? The “chip” shop, of course, writes Charlotte Chambers. Oli’s fish and chip shop in Caledonian Road, to be precise.

Owner Ozgur Toksoylu, who has run the shop for two years, said he thought someone was winding him up when they said Mr Gates would be stopping by for some of Islington’s finest.

He said: “They called me. They said they were calling from Silicon Valley – obviously I didn’t believe them. I thought someone was taking the mick and then they said they saw my Google reviews and that someone came to see the shop and they asked if they could shoot a commercial video for a driverless Jag. They came down, they signed the contract and we had a little commercial video.”

Mr Gates did not collect the chips himself, rather he sent an assistant, but he did wave from the car, Mr Toksoylu said.

Oli’s owner Ozgur Toksoylu at the fish and chip shop on Caledonian Road

The engineering behind the car is made by a tech start-up based in York Way, King’s Cross, called Wayve.

At the start of the video, posted to Mr Gates’s YouTube channel, he introduces the clip by saying: “I was recently asked to take a drive around London in a car without a driver. Or rather no human driver.”

He then goes on to introduce Alex Kendall, the CEO of Wayve, adding: “It was a car operated by Wayve – a start-up that’s developing a new approach to autonomous driving.”

Mr Kendall and Mr Gates get into the car – the passenger seat and the back seat – and Mr Gates is asked where he would like to go. “Let’s go get some fish and chips,” he replies, and off they go to Oli’s.

As the car is still in the development stage, he said from his blog, GatesNotes, a safety driver was present and took control of the wheel more than once.

The clip shows familiar scenes from Caledonian Road and York Way as the car zips through town, with Mr Gates at one point laughing at how well it is navigating around other drivers and cyclists.

Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates tucks into his meal

“This is the real world right here!” he jokes with Mr Kendall, before asking: “Is this guy going backwards? Forwards? Oooh. I’ll give you credit for picking one of the most difficult situations I’ve seen an autonomous car in ever.”

Explaining how Wayve technology is different from any other autonomous vehicle (AVs) he has seen so far, he states in his blog: “While a lot of AVs can only navigate on streets that have been loaded into their system, the Wayve vehicle operates more like a person. It can drive anywhere a human can drive. The algorithm learns by example. It applies lessons acquired from lots of real-world driving and simulations to interpret its surroundings and respond in real time.”

In the video, Mr Kendall explained: “The algorithm is now controlling the speed, the steering, the indication, the breaking, everything about the car’s driving. It’s not being told how to drive with a set of rules and a map, and the beauty of that is that it can learn things that are more complex than you can hand-engineer. If you have to tell the car how to behave in each and every situation – how to exist – you’re never going to cover them all.”

And did they enjoy their chips? The “oohing” and “aahing” sounds made at the end of the clip, as Mr Gates finally tucks into his meal after a long day’s driving, would suggest a resounding yes.