West Midlands Floyd on Britain and Ireland

'The Newcomen engine was the first successful steam engine in the world.

'In front of you is a replica of it,

'the original having been built for Lord Dudley in 1712... You're not interested, are you?

'You breeze up here from the South... Oi! You in the leather jacket!'

When Queen Victoria used to travel up to see Partick Thistle play,

she had the blinds shut as she travelled through the Black Country

so she wouldn't see or smell the acrid and poisonous smoke that belched from the chimneys.

Now, most of that industry has gone and the planners have turned Dudley into a clean, modern town,

just like any other.

CHORAL MUSIC - MOZART

I don't want to call my producer a plagiarist,

but he nicked this piece of music from C4's excellent series, "A Truly British Coup",

starring three of our best-known actors, Ray Mac-An'-Ally!

"When Satan stood on Brierley Hill and far around him gazed,

"He said, 'I never more shall feel at hell's fierce flames amazed.'"

Now, a rare piece of film of the BBC's Programme Review Board(!)

I KNEW it was wrong to mention Channel 4!

Though because this is loosely a cookery programme,

I must tell you where those packets with lyrical pictures of farms

and smiling animals come from.

In this case, it's the Birmingham meat market. Everything is used.

"Why is there no monument to faggot in this land?

"If it's good enough to eat, it's good enough to stand."

Faggots are so important here that they merit national recognition.

I've got the Faggot King here, Richard.

You've got 30 seconds to tell me all about faggots and Black Country cooking,

without mentioning the word "Black Country" once. I'll try!

Here, in the AREA, we are very famous for our faggots and peas.

In this part of the Black Country... That's one.

..the faggots and peas are like Yorkshire Pudding is to Yorkshire.

We're very proud of our traditional faggots and peas. Right.

Faggots and peas, as created by the King, are precisely THAT.

They are wonderful things.

They are so wonderful that I'm going to have a little taste.

Every typical faggot manufacturer

and faggot eater always wears a silk bow tie and neat blazer.

It's traditional. We like to stay with tradition. Thank you, Richard.

Ow! LAUGHTER

Keep going.

They love it when I do things like that. I had a late night last night. That's the truth of it.

I'll have a new plate and some new gravy.

Even that's hot. They're really trying to sabotage me today.

In the sink, we've got about eleven plates of half-eaten faggots.

I haven't been too successful at spooning delicious mushy peas on to a plate with a faggot on it.

You cooked them and I can't even serve them!

Why did you give up that glittering career in London as a chef, to cook humble faggots?

What's wrong with coming back to my roots in the Black Country... Four.

..and keeping alive the traditional faggots and peas that we're all very proud of?

A nice faggot, mushy peas, come back from a day's work, drop of real ale

from the Black Country. What's better than that? Not much.

I tell you what, though... There's a divergence of opinions.

Richard makes his faggots differently from the Floyd family in Somerset. Very worrying.

Just pop that out the way. I must get down to some real work.

The ingredients - caul, they call it kell here, the fatty tissue that surrounds the liver,

breadcrumbs, some lights, normally given to dogs - it shouldn't be -

liver, onions, heart and some sage.

Now, where I come from, we take the whole of the pig's pluck,

and a well-plucked pig leaves nothing but the squeal! OK? Work it out.

We poach it with the sage and onion, then we mince it and wrap it in the caul.

Richard here has the whole ingredients raw, minces them raw...

# With a Spong in my heart...! #

And you mince away for hours and hours

until you end up with a lovely dish of raw, minced lights, heart, liver and stuff like that.

The sage, the onion, breadcrumbs are in there.

You take a piece of this kell, as they call it here, or caul, as we call it in Somerset.

You put a little dollop on. Don't be afraid to use your hands.

It's lovely to play with, like being a potter or a bricklayer.

Sometimes I think I'm a kind of a gastronomic bricklayer.

You take the ingredients, mix them together.

Richard, can you give me a dish?

You put that in your little dish. It needs no further fat. Whack it in the oven. That's very kind.

Imagine you've come home from a hard day's work, and find a room smelling of lovely, hot faggots.

No joke intended.

Anyway, I've been rattling on about the Black Country,

and I have now got to cook something which I think represents the Black Country.

And I haven't got a clue so I'm going on a magical mystery tour. # Postman Pat, Postman Pat... #

A cook, like any other artist - spring-maker, chain-maker, racing driver, pianist,

philosopher, painter, artist of any sort, needs inspiration.

And I need inspiration to create my little dish.

To paint my own canvas, in culinary terms, of what the Black Country is all about.

So I'm gazing out of the window,

looking for the sort of things you'd expect to find for an aspiring young cook like myself.

Things like the MFI Carpet Centre, and chimneys, that sort of stuff.

It's very hard, isn't it?

Van Gogh, when he took his donkey and cart around Provence, didn't know how lucky he was.

There are good things about the Black Country,

like these pork scratchings, which have fascinated my producer.

I don't know where he got them.

Presumably the BBC canteen!

No self-respecting Black Country person would eat these kind of score pratchings!

But they ARE very good.

Erm, between a piece of stale bread, they're even better!

Then there are the other delights.

Your tube of... In poetic and artistic painting terms, this is a tube of black paint.

We call it black pudding and it's normally fried

but, owing to the fact that this "buze" does not have a kitchen, I will eat it raw.

It's very nice raw.

To go back to pottery - the Black Country does run into Staffordshire where they make pottery -

we have a hand-raised, individually made, tailored, should I say, pork pie,

which is very good indeed.

The purpose of this is for me to have a little pint,

cheer myself up, relaxation, before I create my masterpiece.

When I paint my masterpiece, I want you to be there.

So have a look out of the window while I relax and gain inspiration.

This is really weird, isn't it?

He said, "Chat up John, the driver. He knows about Black Country food."

I hate trying to do interviews, so stay with me, but I'm going to ask you some questions.

What's your favourite food?

I like chitterlings.

Not many people like them but I do.

What are chitterlings? You boil up pigs' innards with a bit of swede. Put a bit of mustard on. That's it.

I mean, this interview which I'm conducting very badly...

I haven't got any inspiration. Could you give us a song? I mean, it's a long way to tip a drink down.

Well, there is a little song... "If music BE the food..."

There is a song we finish off with on a night. It goes like this...

# Oh, pin back your ears, And I'll sing you a song of a town that is dear to me heart

# Where they makes chains and nails And they holds jumble sales And everyone's mad about darts

# So take me back where the smoke rolls black, the Delph Prize Ales flow free

# Where factory wenches lie over park benches Cradley Heath means home to me. #

Ha! That's a very naughty song. Let's get another verse!

SQUARE DANCING MUSIC PLAYS

My producer's shortly going on a course on how to choose music for television programmes.

I wish I'd sent him on one before we made this series.

This piece is called "Cowboy Time", most appropriate(!) Yee-ha!

I've racked my brains to create this dish which somehow reflects the Black Country as I've seen it.

To make it very difficult, they've put me on a narrow-boat.

There's no room here to manoeuvre at all. And there's a huge crew of people behind me.

I reckoned the secret was beer.

Black Country beer is very good.

I'm not a beer drinker but up here I've enjoyed a few different kinds.

I thought I would cook some beef in some beer with some onions.

Years ago, the typical barge dish would have been a long pot.

The bottom would be filled with apples, covered with suet pastry,

then layers of meat, suet pastry, vegetables, suet pastry.

They'd pop it all on top of their coal-burning stove all day.

When they finished working, it was cooked, the vegetables, the meat and the pudding at the bottom.

I haven't got that kind of... experience, really,

so I'm going to fry some pieces of stewing steak,

cut in nice little collops, that's a good Midlands word.

Get those quite nicely brown.

And then, now that they are brown, transfer them into this other dish

which has got some good onions sizzling away in the bottom.

There's a delicious smell in this little narrow-boat.

Captains of narrow-boats get very upset if you call them barges!

You pop that in like that.

Then a drop of excellent mild ale.

Turn up the gas to maximum.

A drop of mild ale like that.

Then, a little tiny bit of tomato puree.

Stew that round.

A few good English herbs - a sprig of parsley, a little bit

of thyme and a little bit of sage.

They go in there and bubble away

for...oh...twenty minutes or so.

When that's reduced, you then add some excellent dark meat stock.

Then you cover it, let it simmer.

That will probably take about two hours.

So you go out, look at the lovely countryside, see the salmon leap,

the kingfishers darting about, the fishermen catching crayfish and lobsters, and the herons flapping

and look at the wonderful sights.

When you return, fresh from this wonderful experience,

my dish will be ready.

# The gas was on in the Institute

# The flare was up in the gym

# A man was running a mineral line

# A lass was singing a hymn

# When Captain Webb, the Dawley man

# Captain Webb, from Dawley

# Came swimming along the old canal that carried the bricks to Lawley

# Swimming along, swimming along Swimming along from Severn

# And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to heaven. #

Mm...the terribly good thing about the Black Country is the availability of toffee apples.

I hope you enjoyed the kingfishers and the leaping salmon.

While you've been away, I have been very busy.

I've fried my black pudding and my little beetroots,

so they're succulent and ready

to pop into my beef which has been simmering in the beer and stock,

and my thyme, bay leaf, parsley and sage.

Now, while you were out there, looking at all those things,

my producer nipped off the barge... sorry, the longboat, narrow-boat,

for a few seconds, Vikings as we are,

and nearly bought a Staffordshire terrier.

He explained what I was cooking and they said, "That sounds good." I'm very proud of this little dish.

We now have to finish it off very slightly.

I have to put the beetroot and the black pudding into the sauce there.

OK.

Turn the gas up to maximum for a second so they can absorb

their individual flavours.

Witness, my dear Watson, the interesting colours in here.

Can you see the purple, the beef and the black?

That is my BLACK Country dish.

The only way to test it is to ask a knowledgeable man from the region to try it.

How we get out of the sequence to get the captain to come and taste it, I'm not sure.

Meanwhile, I am going to tip this into my lovely white dish.

I always like food to be the star of the whole thing.

Pop it into my dish like that.

A delightful arrangement of colours and flavours.

A few chives on the top.

And that, I think, sort of sums it up.

Beef simmered in beer. Beetroot, which grows out of lovely sooty black oil.

And the black pudding.

Before you reach for your pens, of course I meant black soil, not oil.

I get carried away but not as much as my producer,

who tried to buy this Staffordshire bull terrier.

When none of us would lend him the money, he spent the rest of the day singing "Old Shep".

SINGING IN BACKGROUND

One very small step for a person.

Here's a dish I'm incredibly proud of, Nigel, if you're not too busy pulling your boat in.

Won't be a second. Great.

They do get me doing some very silly things on this programme.

It's not easy cooking on a narrow-boat.

He's now probably going to tell me he's a vegetarian! Not quite.

Excellent. Beef stewed in beer, with beetroot and black pudding.

My interpretation of what could be a dish of this area.

It's got all the makings, anyway. I think so but you must tell me precisely what you honestly think.

It's very nice.

Yeah. A little bit more? Yeah. I like a bit of black pudding.

What do you cook on the boat most of the time?

We ARE near enough vegetarians.

My wife does lots of things with beans and things like that.

We don't eat much meat, mainly because we can't afford it.

If someone said tomorrow, "No meat", it wouldn't worry me.

But this is very, very nice.

We hold no views about it, really.

Is it lonely living on a boat?

Not really. It can be.

In the old days there was hundreds of people on boats.

There were shops and that catering for the boat people.

But now you haven't got that sort of support. People think you're an oddity.

But it's better than living in a council house.

I could sit down and eat this... definitely. You go ahead.

Thank you very much for the wonderful ride. Much obliged.

Take care of that little baby. Right.

She's fast asleep.

I hope.

No sooner have the planners, under the banner of progress, of course, razed the place to the ground,

than up pops somebody, who realises that people are actually interested in the way we used to live,

and creates the Black Country Museum,

where crocodiles of children and Japanese tourists alike

can discover the lifestyle and architecture of yesteryear.

Yesterday when I arrived, I parked the Bentley on the forecourt

of a pub on an industrial estate,

went in, had a large Scotch, looked around, leant against the bar,

and all these blokes were looking at me.

They said, "Hello, Floydie, you going to do some Groaty Dick?"

I thought, "What on earth's Groaty Dick?"

People did some research and I ended up meeting Joan,

who knows all about Groaty Dick.

In Yorkshire there's Pudding, in the Midlands, it's Groaty Dick.

What on earth is Groaty Dick? It's a nice, nourishing meal.

It's cheap. You get the groats. They're like the husks of the oats.

Looks like bird seed! Yes, it does. You get it from a pet shop so you see what type of pudding it is.

It is very filling when you put your meat and leeks and stock...

And you've got a nice meal for the children or for anyone.

But the children eat pizzas and burgers. They won't eat that.

You still get children who eat it.

My own daughter, you've seen her, she'll eat it... Tasty too!

And when we have... Bonfire Night, especially, down the Black Country Museum,

we have Groaty Pudding and it's amazing the youngsters that will try it. It doesn't look appetising.

They WILL try it. So it is a dish that most people will eat.

Wonderful!

What could be better...

In the succulent South where I live people chuck frozen, horrible hamburgers on little gas barbecues.

You are actually stewing one of these for the people to eat.

If you will excuse me, Richard, my cameraman, will now do a tour of the ingredients.

We have some meat, a few ounces of slightly fatty stewing beef.

Some leeks, very good leeks.

Onions.

And the imperial groats, one of the oldest seeds known to man, bought as bird seed here.

Back home in Somerset, I asked for groats in a health food shop and was directed to the seeds merchant.

We need to chop up an onion. I'll probably cut my fingers.

That's OK. They're sort of chopped like that.

All REAL cooks will know the importance of maintaining stock in your kitchen.

When you've had a chicken, boil the bones, have some stock.

We've got beef stock here.

Very simply, we put the meat

into this earthenware pot like that, raw, no frying.

Then we add our leeks.

I won't give you quantities for this dish because that depends on the size of the pot.

It's going to be great fun... Onions, first. ..Oh, and the onions.

Good job we've got an expert.

I have to talk authoritatively about Groaty Pudding,

never having seen it, tasted it, or known of its existence before.

Bit of salt and pepper, perhaps? That's right.

Beware, if you use a chicken or beef stock cube, they are quite salty so use less salt.

Then our groats in next. And the stock at the last minute? That's right. Like that.

Don't put this out on your bird tray, those of you in that part of the world. This is real food.

Pop that in.

You know, it always does something strange to me when you pour liquid.

It makes me feel that we should... ..have a drink?

..reach for the jug of ale here.

Ale is what life is all about here. That's right.

Cheers to you for explaining everything about that.

This has now got to go in the oven.

Do I need a lid? Take the spoon and... ..Stir it all in? Yes.

That's it. They said it was only the French women that treated me like this!

This is a dish that a child could make. I mean, I can do it.

There's your lid. Excellent. Lid on.

Pop it in the oven. And then it goes into the oven.

That's it.

The oven is set at quite a medium, low temperature, and for how long? Yes, 150, for about sixteen hours.

I beg your pardon? Sixteen hours. Sixteen hours.

We're going to do some pigeon fancying, dog fighting,

the usual traditional Black Country pursuits.

It's cock fighting, not dog fighting. Cock fighting, if that's all the same to you.

We'll be back in about 16 hours.

OK? OK.

We've got the cat out. Yes.

It won't come back in, will it? No. And the dustbin. Yes. It's late.

And actually, it's true, we have watched these little hours tick by.

We have played Trivial Pursuit, Snap, things like that.

But it's ready, isn't it? Yes.

This is, I hope, not love's labours lost, but love's labours won.

Oh, my goodness. That is terrific! That is beautiful!

Richard, have you got a good close-up of that?

The juice is all soaked into the groats. The groats have inflated.

The meat has shredded... Thank you. ..and all joined together.

You were saying...that's a terrible thing to say on television...

But she did tell me they used to cook this so thick, let it get cold, then cut it like a cake.

And before he went off to work,

the husband, the MAN, would take a slice of this in his satchel,

to work, and munch on it. That's true, isn't it? Yes. Very true.

And you'd have a piece of bread, you know, if it was a...

It's lovely. Beautiful.

It really is good. Yes.

I've just been reading the Wolverhampton Express and Star,

dated this day, 15th February 1988.

It says here, look, "Plain truth of French cuisine.

"The French are turning up their noses at gimmicky food in favour of traditional British dishes.

"The menus showed a return to old-fashioned dishes such as boiled beef and carrots, stews

"and freshly cooked vegetables." We've hit another winner.

There you are. Come on! This is it.

We don't follow newspapers, they follow us. We've hit it rich again, because of people like you.

Absolutely! And...it's bedtime. Yes.

Right.

OK? We're going to bed now.

Subtitles by BBC - 1988