Inside the Factory

In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman explore the fascinating factory processes and surprising history behind our favourite festive treats.

Exploring the fascinating factory processes behind Christmas cake, baubles, brandy and more. And why Christmas tree lights are called fairy lights. Ruth Goodman adds her own Christmas revelations by investigating how our early industrial heritage inspired Charles Dickens to write a Christmas Carol, and why we call Christmas tree lights fairy lights.

In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace visits a factory which produces 2,000,000 tins of festive chocolate assortments a year.

Gregg Wallace is in Nottingham at an enormous party food factory where they produce 200,000 canapes every 24 hours.

Gregg catches up with the Essity paper mill in Manchester, which he visited back in 2018. The coronavirus crisis caused a huge spike in toilet roll sales.

Gregg reconnects with the Heinz baked beans factory in Wigan which he visited back in 2016. The coronavirus crisis caused a massive spike in the sales of tinned goods, and the baked beans factory upped production to deliver almost 50 million cans in just one month, nearly double the amount of tins they would normally sell in the same period.

Gregg reconnects with the Walkers crisps factory in Leicester, the largest crisp factory in the world, which he visited back in 2016. We Brits love a snack, and when the coronavirus crisis hit, sales of packet treats rose by 32% as shoppers spent more than £63 million in just one week.

Gregg reconnects with the Typhoo tea factory in the Wirral near Liverpool, which he visited back in 2017. The coronavirus crisis caused tea bag sales to soar, and the factory has upped production to produce 109 million tea bags in a week, an increase of 28 million. Throughout the episode, Gregg looks back over his original visit to the factory and the whole production process. First, he helps unload 24 tonnes of dried tea from Kenya and then follows its journey through the 28,500-square-metre factory to make the nation's favourite - good, old-fashioned builder's tea. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey travels to Kenya to see how the tea crop is picked, processed and shipped over 4,000 miles to the UK. She also learns how to master the art of making the best tea bag brew, revealing the top tips for a perfect cuppa. And historian Ruth Goodman explores how tea kept up morale during World War II.

Gregg Wallace reconnects with the McVitie’s factory in Harlesden, north west London, which he visited back in 2017. The coronavirus crisis caused a huge spike in the nation's desire for sweet treats, and sales of the firm’s chocolate digestives rose by 71 per cent, meaning in just two months, they sold an astonishing 12.5 million packets.

Gregg Wallace visits the Woodmansterne card factory in in Watford. It’s one of the largest greeting card companies in the UK, a family business sending out 35 million cards a year. He gets stuck into all aspects of the card creation process - from sketching a card design, to creating an aluminium plate for the printing process, to the guillotining of the sheets into cards and the final shipping process, which takes the cards as far afield as Australia and Singapore. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey creates a vegan Christmas feast, and historian Ruth Goodman unwraps the story of the year when Christmas was cancelled