Many diners reach for a hand towel after tackling a bucket of KFC, but they would perhaps not expect to find one deep-fried in their chicken pieces.
Krystal Henderson, 29, was horrified when she bought a chicken meal for her step-son Oliver Hallam, only for him to bite into a piece and find it was hard and inedible - closer inspection revealed it was a piece of blue hand roll.
The nursery nurse, from Gosforth, Newcastle, said: 'I got a shock. I thought the actual chicken had gone off. All it was inside was deep-fried blue roll.'
'Realising it was blue roll was worse than chicken. If it was bad chicken they might have just had a bad batch or something, but the blue roll could have been used for anything - it could have bleach or disinfectant on it.
'I didn't know where the blue roll had been because it was screwed up.
'Had someone wiped their hands on it, had it been used to wipe the floor?
'To give that to a child, I felt so guilty even though it wasn't my fault. For a child to bite into that is horrendous.
'When he bit into it, it was rock hard. He pulled it out of his mouth and when he did, it pulled away the batter - you could see the blue roll inside.
'If you bite into something that awful you are just taken back.'
Ms Henderon bought the meal from the Killingworth branch of KFC on Tyne and Wear as a takeaway to eat at home.
But as Oliver went to tuck into one of the four boneless pieces of chicken - bought for £1.99 - he noticed something was amiss.
After realising what it was inside, Ms Henderson returned to the restaurant but was simply told to call customer support.
'I was traumatised by it - I was really upset,' she said. 'I went back into the store crying and they said I had to call customer service.
'I had to keep ringing them and keep following it up. It felt like I had to do all the work when it was their mistake.
'I work full time and I'm a mother. I just don't have the time to keep chasing them up and ringing around.
'After what has happened, I shouldn't have to.'
She said the incident has put her and Oliver off KFC for life.
'Oliver is only 7 but he knows exactly what was going on and he doesn't want to go to KFC again,' she said.
'He didn't eat anything for the rest of the week. He completely lost his appetite.
'He wasn't unwell or grumpy, just lost his appetite.'
Following an investigation, KFC apologised and offered her a free meal.
A letter to Ms Henderson read: 'The blue tissue has most likely originated from a tissue roll used for KFC hygiene purposes.
'The store assume it must have fallen unseen into the breading lug that is under the sieve and was not noticed by the cook.'
A spokesperson for the franchise that operates KFC in Killingworth said: 'We're very sorry for Ms Henderson's experience and apologised to her immediately, as well as giving her a refund at the time of the incident.
'We take food quality and hygiene very seriously and unfortunately, on this extremely rare occasion, our restaurant failed to meet the high standards that both we and our customers expect.
'We have retrained staff on our stringent food preparation procedures at this store to ensure this doesn't happen again.'
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