No it's not getting more popular, it's Jessop's are actually listening to us.
Last year I went into Jessops on a rare trip back to the UK, and found 2 rolls of B&W film, I emailed a senior manager in Leicester pointing out serious photographers don't by 1 or 2 rolls at a time. A week later the shop had far larger stock levels of film.
I happened to mention that Boots the Chemist had far better stock levels of film, and they aren't even a High Street chain of Photo-stores.
Jessop lost "Focus" and forgot that not everyone wanted to use digital.
Ian