If you found candy with my name in it, here's why.

0:00 The last of my three stops in Yorkshire involved boiling sugar,

0:04 human talent, and the most surreal souvenir I got on the entire trip.

0:08 In the East Riding of Yorkshire,

0:10 just on the outskirts of a fishing port called Bridlington,

0:13 I arrived at the John Bull Rock Factory.

0:18 I don’t think you could come up with a more English name than that: John Bull,

0:22 the caricatured personification of England that fell

0:25 rather out of fashion during the 20th century,

0:27 and rock, which is… difficult to translate to any other dialect of English.

0:32 6:30 in the morning, because folks who make candy get up early.

0:37 Rock is a type of candy, or to use the English term,

0:41 sweets, and I’m going to need to explain its significance later,

0:44 not just to those outside of Britain,

0:45 but I suspect these days to a lot of younger folks in the country as well.

0:48 All you need to know for now is that it’s not “rock candy”.

0:51 It’s not the crystallised stuff that Americans might know.

0:54 It’s more like a candy cane only a bit more brittle, without the bend,

0:59 and usually with letters all the way through it end to end,

1:02 usually the name of whichever seaside town you bought it in.

1:06 So, let me introduce you to Albert and Charles,

1:09 who are on deck early to start making rock.

1:12 30 kilos of sugar and about 19 litres of glucose.

1:17 We class it as about ten seconds of water.

1:19 -Right.

1:20 So, we turn the tap on, ten seconds of water.

1:22 As I say, that’s just to stop it sticking.

1:24 And that’s all going to boil away.

1:25 That’s gone.

1:27 The pan’s cooking now, so it’s up to you,

1:30 what colours and flavours would you like?

1:32 Oh, okay.

1:33 What are my options?

1:34 -We’ve got a traditional pink mint.

1:37 -Yep.

1:37 We’ve got all the flavours you can think of, orange, banana, raspberry, pear.

1:42 Oh, raspberry.

1:43 Raspberry’ll do nicely.

1:44 Raspberry, okay.

1:45 Colour-wise, full casing or stripes?

1:48 Red?

1:49 Oh, stripes, definitely.

1:50 Reddish...

1:51 -Red and white?

1:52 Red and white stripes?

1:54 -Yeah.

1:54 English flag, and also, your colours.

1:57 -Perfect.

1:57 -Red and white, raspberry.

1:58 All right.

1:59 -Perfect.

1:59 We’ll go for that then.

2:00 Also, my colours!

2:01 My filming uniform for this series was red and white.

2:04 It worked out nicely.

2:05 Now, Charles said that the “pan” was “cooking”,

2:08 which sounds much less dangerous than it actually is:

2:11 the pan is a boiling cauldron of sugar, glucose syrup and water.

2:17 Oh, I can feel the heat off that.

2:20 That’s, what, 135, you said?

2:22 It will be 135, but at the moment the thermometer is reading 113,

2:26 so, we’ve got a little bit to go yet.

2:28 -Okay.

2:28 So, that’s just steadily ticking up.

2:29 And there’s just a giant gas burner under there!

2:33 That’s 135 Celsius, so about 275 Fahrenheit.

2:36 Molten sugar burns are particularly bad,

2:39 because not only does the heat scald you,

2:41 you can’t rinse the sticky goo off easily,

2:44 it clings to you while it’s retaining all that heat

2:46 and it might take some skin off with it.

2:49 So, I stood well back as they rigged up the cauldron

2:51 on their equipment and poured out the sugar-syrup mixture onto a table.

2:56 Let’s not put me in the middle of this… And it looks just like a bubbly liquid.

3:01 It looks like it isn’t dangerous.

3:08 I have to keep reminding myself that that is boiling sugar water.

3:13 That’s boiling sticky sugar water.

3:16 So, the water’s just there just to stop when it first starts,

3:20 that helps it mix and stops it sticking to the pan.

3:22 -Oh, so most of that’s boiled off.

3:24 -That’s gone.

3:24 The water’s gone.

3:25 -So that’s just… -There isn’t a lot of water.

3:27 It’s just enough to get it mixing.

3:28 -That’s just sugar syrup.

3:29 It’s pure sugar.

3:31 The table is divided into sections.

3:33 That’s so they can keep different colours separate.

3:35 -Oh, so that’s the colouring going in.

3:37 -That’s the colouring going in.

3:39 So, we have ten minutes, roughly, to play on here.

3:42 -Ten minutes?

3:43 -About ten minutes.

3:44 About a quarter of the rock is going to be red.

3:46 The rest is going to be white.

3:47 It doesn’t look white yet, we’ll come back to that later.

3:50 I did set up a wide-angle camera to catch some shots that I might miss,

3:53 but it really did not like the fluorescent lighting in there,

3:56 so we’re going to stick to my POV camera for most of this.

4:00 If they left it, it would go like glass, underneath.

4:03 -Right.

4:03 -So it’d set like a sheet of glass.

4:05 -Oh!

4:06 And that’s within ten minutes.

4:07 So it has to get stirred up, no matter what.

4:09 Yeah.

4:09 We have to cut it up and mix it.

4:11 The sugar’s already being folded into sheets

4:14 after just a few seconds on the table.

4:16 It’s now an amorphous goo, cooled enough that it can be handled,

4:19 at least by people who understand the safety part.

4:21 They mixed the red into one section of it, and then,

4:24 I got handed a bit of the goo that had cooled, off at the side.

4:27 -Is that safe to…?

4:29 -Yeah, yeah, that’d be quite cool.

4:31 Huh.

4:32 That is set like glass.

4:34 -That's how it goes.

4:36 -Yeah.

4:36 -And it’s not sticky.

4:38 And it will cut you as well.

4:39 If you break that, it’ll be sharp.

4:41 Wow.

4:41 I don’t know what I’m expecting.

4:43 This is pure sugar, but you know, it’s… Yeah, that’s pure, unflavoured sugar.

4:49 Of course it tastes good, it’s pure sugar!

4:52 I’m going to put that away before I eat far too much of it.

4:54 If you ask someone from Yorkshire to tell the story,

4:57 they might say the inventor of rock was a man named Ben Bullock,

5:01 an ex-miner who’d moved over to Yorkshire

5:03 from Lancashire and become a confectioner.

5:05 Plain rock, without the colours and letters,

5:06 was already a thing sold in fairgrounds,

5:08 but Bullock was on holiday in Blackpool in the 1880s and had an idea.

5:12 He came back home to Yorkshire and made

5:14 the first modern rock with words running through it.

5:17 And those words were: “Whoa Emma”, the title of a then-popular music hall song.

5:23 Because inexplicable phrases and in-jokes have been part

5:26 of pop culture since well before the internet,

5:28 since well before today’s kids started yelling...

5:30 whatever they’re yelling right now.

5:32 “Whoa Emma” is listed in Green’s Dictionary of Slang with quotations

5:36 that seem to show that not only it was known across the country,

5:39 but people were getting really tired of it!

5:41 And it’s almost completely forgotten now.

5:43 I did look it up, there are two more

5:45 recent songs with the same name, it’s not them.

5:47 I had to track down a copy of the sheet music in the British

5:50 Library and it turns out the lyrics

5:52 are a man complaining about his alcoholic wife.

5:55 Because it’s out of copyright, I asked a composer I know, Ben,

5:58 to create a couple of lines of the chorus

6:00 as it might have sounded in the music hall.

6:02 (piano and singers)♪ Oh, Emma, whoa, Emma!

6:04 Emma, this will never do.

6:06 Whoa, Emma, oh, Emma!

6:07 Emma, I’m ashamed of you.

6:09 That wasn’t really exciting enough,

6:11 so I also asked Ben to turn it into 1990s Dutch happy hardcore.

6:15 (happy hardcore music; high-pitched vocal)♪ Ohhhh, Emma!

6:17 Whoooa, Emma!

6:18 Emma, this will nev-er do.

6:20 Ohhhh, Emma!

6:21 Whoooa, Emma!

6:23 Emma, I’m ashamed of you.

6:24 (music echoes and slowly fades) I make no apologies for that.

6:27 Anyway, the story goes that Ben Bullock

6:29 sold that first “Whoa Emma” batch locally,

6:31 but his second batch said “Blackpool”, was sent to Blackpool,

6:34 became a hit, and suddenly there was seaside rock.

6:38 Some of that is probably true!

6:40 But there’s a reference in Henry Mayhew’s book,

6:42 “London Labour and the London Poor”,

6:44 which I also pulled from the British Library,

6:45 that’s from a few decades earlier, and it says,

6:47 “The man who has the best trade in London streets,

6:50 is one who, about two years ago,

6:52 “introduced short sentences into his sticks.” So,

6:55 it’s fair to say that Ben Bullock popularised rock and commercialised rock,

7:00 but probably didn’t invent it?

7:02 But also, his timing was right.

7:04 The Victorians, in the 1880s, had invented the seaside holiday.

7:09 The new railways had made the fresh air

7:11 of the coast available to the working class.

7:13 And up in the north-west of England,

7:14 with the Industrial Revolution in full swing,

7:16 whole towns would take their holidays at the same time.

7:20 The factories would all shut down together,

7:22 and lots of people would decamp to the same place,

7:26 to the town at the end of the train line, at the seaside.

7:30 The different towns would coordinate with each other so,

7:32 there weren’t too many people in the resorts at the same time.

7:34 And those holidaymakers wanted souvenirs.

7:37 You would bring a stick of rock back home.

7:39 It’s really cheap, and it’s got the town’s name running all the way through it.

7:43 It was this small, edible, affordable piece of the seaside that you could keep

7:47 for yourself or give to the folks who hadn’t travelled out.

7:50 And when most of the jobs were hard factory

7:52 labour and medical science wasn’t anywhere near as advanced,

7:55 there was a lot less concern about sugar.

7:57 By the later part of the 20th century,

7:59 a combination of cheap package holidays, industrial decline,

8:02 and health concerns meant that going to the seaside and giving your child

8:06 a lump of flavoured sugar became less fashionable than it once was.

8:09 But rock is still very much made, sold, bought, and eaten.

8:13 John Bull have a shop in Bridlington, and the factory offers tours.

8:16 Plus, they make chocolates and cookies, and they have a gift shop.

8:19 Rock is still a very cheap souvenir.

8:22 And they’ve also expanded to have a kids’ soft play centre next door,

8:25 ’cos it’s important to have more than one income stream.

8:28 Now that the colour’s mixed in, the John Bull folks are

8:30 going to cool the sugar-goop down to a better working temperature.

8:33 They connect the table to a cold water supply so,

8:35 there’s a constant stream running through it,

8:37 take off the safety gloves and instead dust their hands

8:39 with what I think might be cornstarch to stop anything sticking.

8:43 See how it’s changing and getting thicker and thicker and thicker, yeah?

8:46 -Yeah.

8:46 There you go.

8:47 Have a touch of that.

8:49 It’s a bit sticky, but have a feel of the heat that’s still in it.

8:51 Oh, that’s slightly squishy and just hot enough that me without

8:54 my asbestos fingers is just a little bit worried about it.

8:58 -Ah, you’re fine, you’ll be fine.

9:00 -(laughing) But that squishy proto-candy is yellow,

9:03 and it needs to be white for seaside rock.

9:05 The solution to that is the pulling machine.

9:07 So, too soft it’ll fall off the pulling machine, too stiff it’ll fly everywhere.

9:11 -Right, okay.

9:12 -It’s got to be just right.

9:13 And again, there’s no measuring thing for that, you’ve just got to know.

9:16 It is just knowledge, it is just knowledge and skill and trial and error,

9:19 I think, at the beginning, I reckon.

9:21 (chuckling) That machine folds air into the proto-candy,

9:24 changing the structure and making it a very pale white.

9:28 That’s your raspberry flavour going in it.

9:31 So, we have white rock and red rock.

9:33 The flavour’s in the white, the colour’s in the red,

9:35 but as yet we do not have the letters.

9:37 And as far as I knew,

9:38 they were going to make a tiny batch of candy that said, “Tom”.

9:42 And I can only describe what’s about to happen as wizardry.

9:46 It is someone who is extremely skilled,

9:48 extremely well-practiced just doing their job.

9:51 -So this is gonna be the T.

9:53 -That’s going to be the…right!

9:54 -This is your name, now, this is it.

9:56 -That’s it, yep.

9:57 There we go, that’s a T.

9:59 So, you’ve just got to remember the recipe

10:01 for every letter basically and figure out… Yeah, yeah, the construction of it.

10:05 You’ve got to know the full construction of how you make every letter.

10:08 The candy is still warm enough to be pliable.

10:10 If they need parts to stay separate, they dust them.

10:13 If they need to make them stick, they wipe them down with water.

10:16 And everything just ran smoothly.

10:17 There’s a T, an O which is made

10:20 by rolling the colour around a white central part,

10:22 and then an M which obviously, in hindsight,

10:25 is constructed by making one half and then folding it over to the other side.

10:29 And at that point, with all the letters inside the packing bars,

10:32 I thought we were done.

10:34 But then, with...

10:35 with an unnecessary but very impressive flourish of the scissors, he kept going.

10:41 Wait, hold on, are you doing a full name here?

10:44 -Tom Scott, right?

10:45 -Oh my...

10:46 Yeah, I assumed it was just gonna be Tom, because you can re...okay.

10:49 Because I figured they could sell rock with “Tom” in it, right?

10:52 There are a lot of Toms in the world.

10:53 But...

10:53 No.

10:54 Full name.

10:56 So those get stretched.

10:57 Meanwhile, cut the stripes in half, put ’em next to each other,

11:04 clean them up, and they just glue together.

11:08 Yeah, just wet on the cloth, just water on the cloth,

11:11 because it’s quite dry, believe it or not.

11:13 -Huh.

11:14 So, you need it a little bit sticky, so,

11:16 you just put water on the cloth, sticks it together.

11:19 -Right.

11:20 So, now we’re going to build up one very

11:23 large stick of rock with your name in it.

11:26 (laughter) It’s a little difficult to make out the name right now,

11:30 but that’s going to change, I’m guessing.

11:33 I wish I could have thought of something

11:35 less egotistical than my name to put in there,

11:37 but I didn’t know this was happening until I got there.

11:39 And more than that, I didn’t realise quite how much rock they were making,

11:43 because there’s a minimum batch size!

11:45 -That is about, what, 30, 35… -45, 50.

11:49 45, 50 kilos of rock with my name in it!

11:54 That’s a lot of rock.

11:55 I did also get a quick go at lettering myself with some offcuts,

11:59 and I started by saying the immortal words… -How hard can it be?

12:02 -Well, we’re about to find out.

12:03 Right, it’s just Tom, right?

12:05 That’s the plan.

12:05 -That is the plan, just Tom.

12:07 -Okay.

12:07 I will spare you the lengthy shots of me

12:09 struggling to work as fast as a professional,

12:11 partly because it’s a bit boring, and partly to save my ego.

12:14 Physical dexterity is not exactly my forte.

12:17 And again, sorry for the lighting on that side camera, it did its best.

12:20 Highlights, though, I did say this...

12:23 -Wet.

12:24 -Wet.

12:25 -Wet.

12:25 -And then put that over the top.

12:27 And put that over the top.

12:28 And also this...

12:30 Oh, I don’t think my piece is thin enough!

12:32 And also this...

12:34 Not a big fan of that 'O', I’ll be honest with you.

12:35 -Stretch it out.

12:36 -Stretch it out.

12:36 Yeah, so it’s all the same length.

12:39 The longer I took, the more that proto-candy

12:41 cooled and the more difficult the job got.

12:42 Charles said it was about six months to a year

12:44 of on-the-job training before someone really had it up to professional standard.

12:48 Even he’s not an expert, it’s been a while since he did it.

12:50 Alright, and then that should be… Tom.

12:54 -(laughter) It’s not!

12:57 (laughter) I mean, we still have to break them.

12:59 We still have to actually see what it’s like at the core there.

13:02 We’ll, um...

13:03 We’ll see.

13:04 First, Charles’ effort...

13:08 Look at that!

13:11 (laughter) It does look a bit wonkier before it’s pulled into rock.

13:15 The stretching process will even things out.

13:17 And anyway, compared to mine… -I mean, I could have done worse!

13:21 -There, see?

13:21 I could definitely have done worse!

13:23 (laughter) Meanwhile,

13:25 what’s happening to that 45 kilos of rock with my full name in it,

13:29 which is a service they do for corporate clients, by the way.

13:32 If you’re a business and you want to hand

13:33 out candy canes with your company name lettered all through,

13:36 or if you want something special for your wedding favours, they’ll do that.

13:39 My lump of rock was going into a single- purpose machine

13:42 to do the stretching where it goes in, gets rotated back and forth,

13:46 and it’s steadily squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

13:51 There’s this colossal 45-kilo lump over there that’s just been...spaghettified?

14:00 So, as we’re rolling it, we put a little twist in it.

14:03 You see how I’m twisting?

14:06 -Right.

14:06 Yeah, so we put a little twist just to make it a bit jazzy.

14:10 You must keep it rolling otherwise it goes square.

14:13 So we’ve got the fans to set it now.

14:14 So the fans are cooling it down rapidly.

14:16 -Yeah.

14:17 There’s so much temperature management, isn’t there?

14:19 Yeah.

14:19 That’s the skill of it, I think.

14:22 Eventually there was about a hundred metres of rock

14:26 with my name all the way through it.

14:28 This is some of that rock!

14:29 It’s got my name through it, which is very, very strange, right?

14:33 That’s just a strange thing to say.

14:35 I am uncomfortable with having my name in… well,

14:38 not lights, but you know what I mean, right?

14:40 Rock with your own name in it just sounds incredibly vain.

14:45 They chopped it up, bagged it up… Oh!

14:48 (chopping) That’s so much more gentle than I thought it would be.

14:53 And then they gave me some of it.

14:55 And it’s really difficult to explain

14:57 to a worldwide audience how much seaside rock

14:59 is a thing and how much seeing my name in there is just like… no-one,

15:03 no-one gets to see their name in a stick of rock!

15:06 But I wasn’t going to take 45 kilos of rock with me.

15:08 What would I do with it?

15:09 I’m not going to hand out vanity rock to people, that would be ridiculous.

15:12 And where would I even keep it?

15:13 I’m on a road trip.

15:14 I’d end up with an ant colony in the back of my car.

15:16 So, the last thing I need to introduce you to is...

15:19 the Chipper.

15:20 Because it’s not going to waste.

15:21 That batch of rock, it was the warm-up batch.

15:24 Get everything sorted for the day before the serious stuff,

15:25 before they start making the Union Jack rock or the corporate

15:28 orders so they can check all the equipment works.

15:30 That batch was turned into...

15:32 broken rock.

15:34 It gets mixed in with all the other test batches,

15:36 maybe even factory errors or mistaken orders,

15:38 and it gets sold in bulk at a steep discount.

15:40 I don’t know where that rock ended up.

15:42 But if you bought a bag of candy at some point in the last few

15:45 months and a few pieces of it had my name in it… now you know why.

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