Original subtitles

Oh, this is the life chair, isn't it? Sat outside, cup of tea, and a tin of

biscuits. And when it comes to biscuits, I see you as a custard cream.

Everybody loves them.

Do you know what you remind me of? A teeny, tiny little cookie. Lovely while

you're there, but it doesn't last very long.

Today we're at one of Europe's biggest biscuit factories.

So again?

Yeah.

But even Cherrykite burst my bubble today.

Because I'm like a kid in a sweet shop.

Everyone's going to wonder what's happened to this shop.

Well, a biscuit shop.

Everywhere I look in here, there's something delightful.

Finding out how the most memorable treat in my mum's biscuit tin is made.

That's so good, that.

And getting into some sticky situations along the way.

Jenny! Jen, I'm losing it.

Get them in, love.

Just get them in as best we can.

Sit hard.

Kerry's under pressure too.

In a quest to test the best biscuit to dunk.

While a less caffeinated Ruth Goodman... A mobile canteen.

..discovers how a million women risked their lives to provide a brew and

where it was needed most.

They really are the forgotten heroine of the Second World War.

Did you know that 4 .4 billion biscuits pass through this factory every year?

I mean, how...? because they produce so many.

I am so glad you're asked because literally that's what we're here to tell

everybody. Welcome to Inside the Factory.

Hand washing.

Here we go.

I always feel like a surgeon doing this.

Like that?

Yeah, exactly.

Right, here we go.

Thank you.

Right, go and do some work. Have a good one.

This is the Foxy's Burton's Biscuit Factory in Cwmbran, South Wales.

And they've been making biscuits here since 1939.

And for myself, a person who absolutely loves biscuits, this place is heaven on

earth. Let's get involved.

Hi love, we're only wandering past, you alright?

Look at these little raff dolls.

How are you pal?

I recognise that.

As well as cookies and other classics like wagon wheels, this factory

produces one of the most recognisable biscuits in Britain.

Ah! The mighty Jammy Dodger. They've been making these little beauties at

factory since the 1960s. And they've been a tea time staple ever since.

So today, I'm following production of the pack of eight.

So, while I have a sneaky brew, Cherry's getting the biscuit ball rolling with

delivery driver, Marching Akatsuki.

Oh, lovely, thank you. So what's in here?

We've got plain flour.

Plain white flour?

Yeah. For biscuits?

For biscuits.

Okay, and how much is in here?

26 tons. That's a lot of biscuits.

A lot.

The factory gets through five tankers of fine white biscuit flour every day.

Is that right?

I'll work out.

And once it's connected to the 50 -ton silo... Now I'm going to get back on the

road.

We can start the clock on our production.

I'm feeding the factory with flour.

As the flour flows... Hey, Folly, all right?

I'm sorting the other ingredients at the weighing area.

where Head of Research and Development, Gemma James, and Shift Operation

Manager, Jamie Caswell, are already hard at work.

Hiya, Gemma. Hi, Paddy. How are you? You OK? Yeah, good, thank you. You all

right, Jamie?

Hiya, Paddy.

Don't leave me hanging like that.

Now, you've got a handful of powder there. I have indeed. I've stopped you

-scoop. What are we doing here?

So we've got the key ingredients here going into our biscuit. So we've got the

bicarbonate of soda, which is a raising agent. It helps release the carbon

dioxide. So it helps with the raising of the biscuit and the finished texture.

You've got the bubble structure, so it's nice and light.

Also scooped into colour -coded bags is a butter alternative and table salt.

And what are you doing there, Jamie? You're measuring them all out, pal. I'm

measuring them all out. We could use up to 75 per day.

So this is a full -time job for someone to do this all day.

Just while we're here, and we're right at the start here, I want to get this

of the way. When it comes to dunking in a cup of tea, these aren't the biscuit I

go to.

Do you dunk the old jammy biscuits?

Yes, I would. And just to put it out there, I prefer herbal tea to dunk.

Hang on here, Paddy. Hold me up, Paul. Hang on here, Paddy. Did you hear what

she said there?

That's sacrilege.

My word. Well, everyone's got their different ways of dunking the biscuits

the tea, but there's a real scientific approach to how long you leave them in,

what's the correct texture and everything else, and do you know who

answer to that?

Cherry?

Cherry. He knows. Cherry Healy.

That's right, Paddy.

Can I have one cup of tea and two biscuits, please?

Any biscuit can be dunked and probably should be dunked. But which dunker is

the best according to science?

To help me put it to the test... Hi there, can I get a tea and two biscuits,

please? ..I'm meeting engineer and great British bake -off finalist Andrew

Smith. Well, hi, Andrew.

Hello, Cherry.

Why do we feel the impulse, the wild impulse, to dunk our biscuit in our tea?

Well, I think first and foremost, it releases a load of tastes and flavours

aromas, but different biscuits perform very differently.

Not all biscuits are equal.

No, absolutely not. And there's been quite a few studies done of this, and

NHS doctors put these to the test, and we're going to take inspiration from

today and do some science.

We've come to the University of Reading.

to identify the ultimate dunking champion.

Welcome to the lab, Cherry.

Very science -y, I love it already.

So we've got three biscuits that I've chosen. We've got the traditional

digestive. Good old classic staple.

Second, the modest, rich pea biscuit.

It's got the word pea on it. You would hope that it would do well.

And last but not least, the oat biscuit.

Chunky, oaty.

Texture. All the biscuits might look similar, but how they're made and the

ingredients actually are quite different.

Each supermarket -owned brand biscuit will be dunked in a beaker of freshly

prepared English breakfast tea, brewed for five minutes before milk is added,

and tested when it's between 60 and 65 degrees Celsius.

Test number one is absorption.

So we're looking at how much tea the biscuits can soak up. And all biscuits

porous, so that means they've got all these little gaps and channels in

the crumbs of the biscuit. And through capillary action, that... Soaks up the

tea into the biscuit.

What do you mean by capillary action?

So capillary action is the tendency for a fluid to go up a channel when it's

presented with it. The tea wants to be in the biscuit.

Exactly. I'm gagging to get in there.

First, we weigh the three undunked biscuits.

Chops away. And then dunk each one precisely halfway into the tea for

five seconds.

And out we come. And weigh each biscuit again.

To reveal the percentage increase in weight of each dunked bicky.

So the winner of that one was the rich tea biscuit, which absorbed a whopping

% of its weight in tea.

So the biscuit that absorbs the most tea, therefore helping the flavour

compounds move around, was that.

tastes better in theory.

Yes, absolutely. It more efficiently distributes all those flavours and

around your mouth, which is where you perceive flavour. So the tea becomes

almost a vehicle for the delicious flavours in the biscuit.

Yes, transporting us to flavour land.

But absorption could impact another important biscuit quality.

Are we interviewing the biscuits for test number two?

Test number two, Cherry, is all about crunch.

Are you saying this is the crunch -o -meter? It is the crunch -o -meter.

Let's start with the digestive.

OK.

I'm adding the tea.

I syringe three millilitres of freshly brewed tea onto the centre of each

biscuit. Thirsty biscuit.

And wait for it to absorb for four seconds.

Quiet in the lab, please.

57 .8. And then snap it in half, one centimetre away from the crunchometer.

The rich tea.

67 .1. The oaty biscuit.

61 so the rich tea biscuit is the snappiest the crunchiest but why is that

good thing well believe it or not the crunch actually makes the biscuit taste

better because it makes our brain think it's a fresher biscuit so even though

we're dunking it and reducing a bit of that crunch the louder it is the more we

perceive it as fresh and delicious

Andrew, what is the third and final challenge that our biscuits have to

We're going to see which one can be dunked the most before it just crumbles

the tea. When I've dunked my biscuit, if it falls into my tea, it's like all is

lost. It's ruined.

It's the breaking point test, the most dramatic of them all. It's like the

gladiator rip.

Biscuit, are you ready?

In, out. I lower each of the three biscuits exactly halfway.

into a freshly brewed tea.

Again. And again.

Until... I've got... Seven dunks. Seven dunks for the digestive.

Oh!

There we go. She's down.

Ten dunks.

What does this get made of?

I'm flabbergasted. In.

A hundred times. A hundred times.

In. Keep going, Kerry. We've got the science on.

I've gone into a really weird place.

What is going on?

I'm scared. I'm scared.

Do you know what? I feel like Ant and Dec are going to...

135 dunks. That number doesn't feel real, but... We were there.

Compared to seven for the digestive.

Why did this biscuit suddenly become invincible?

It's incredible, right?

And as you look inside a rich tea biscuit, it's actually very tightly

and... It has these kind of layers that look a little bit more bready. It's got

lots of gluten in there. And you saw that, the way it's stretched and held

together, right? All that gluten that is softening and it stays elastic.

And more gluten, stronger structure and lighter.

It's the dream combination.

It's a structural engineering marvel.

So the rich tea biscuit is the overall winner. But do you want...

A biscuit that you can dunk 130 plus times. I think the perfect time is

around one second to get that balance of aroma release but retaining crunch.

And that's roughly about the time it takes to say one biscuit.

One biscuit.

That's a one second dunk.

Mmm.

Add a bit of cheese.

The biscuity aromas.

A little crunch.

I have to say, that is dunking lovely.

Mmm.

And while we leave Cherry scoffing the programme's profit,

I'm living my

1980s childhood dreams.

Hey, I'm at the Jammie Dodgers factory.

Earlier. Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down.

Never gonna...

This is heaven.

Lovely score.

My pre -waved biscuit ingredients have been tipped into a mixer.

Then a clever computer adds sugar, flour and vegetable oil.

And after 15 minutes of mixing, Gemma and I can see the results.

He'll be here in a minute.

Oh, here you go. Here we go. Just tip it onto you.

A whopping 600 kilograms of dough, enough to make 93 ,600

biscuits.

into a door cutter, which separates it into strips.

Ah!

So here we've got the finished dough, Paddy.

It's quite soft, isn't it? It's lovely and soft. So in the dough we've got the

raising agent, so the carbon dioxide bubbles are gassing away in there. It's

quite cool. I expected it to be warm.

So ideally we want the dough about 22, 24 degrees C at this stage.

See, when it comes to biscuits, that'll do me.

Put a bit of jam in the middle of that and I'll be happy with that. No.

Jammy balls.

Sounds wrong, but it tasted nicer in my head.

Once this has gone up here, then what?

Now we need to transform this dough into biscuits.

And once it leaves here, it will head to the rotary moulder.

And you will meet Rebecca there.

So is that me and you, Dom? That is Paddy.

Oh, Gemma.

Lovely meeting you. Listen, hold that.

Bye. I'll see you in a bit.

See you.

Our door travels along a 17 -metre -long conveyor.

And guiding me on its onward journey is Rebecca Phillips.

You all right, Rebecca?

How are you? You OK?

I'm very well, thank you, Paddy. Gemma sent me down to see you. What do you do

here? I'm the Paddy's general manager.

You're the person we have to thank.

Families up and down the country have been lost without you, Rebecca, let me

tell you. It's our pleasure.

Now, before we crack on, I'm just going to ask you, what are you dipping your

biscuit into?

A strong cup of tea.

We're going to get on.

Gemma, lovely person, but, to be honest...

You need to get rid of her.

She dips hers in herbal tea. It's not good for the factory.

While HR escorts Gemma off the premises, my chopped -up door is heading to the

moulding area, where it's getting some proper love and attention.

One, two, three!

This is what I recognise.

I've noticed it's coming out

of, it looks like a mould.

Yes, that's right. I presume it'd be like a cookie cutter kind of thing that

do at home.

No, not like you do at home. The reason we use a moulding roller is because we

want to be able to maintain the intricacy of the design and also the

of the biscuit.

Our door lands on the brass roller which is imprinted with 264 biscuit -shaped

moulds.

A forcing roller pushes the door into the mould and a fixed knife removes any

excess that can then be recycled.

2 ,880 intricate tops and bottoms are made every minute.

Can you see the well on the base? Yes.

Now, that's been specifically designed so that when the closet is baked and

cooled and we add the jam, that the jam sits nicely in the centre of the

biscuit. You don't get any jam spilling over the outside.

I just presumed it were a flat biscuit with jam on it and then the other bit

stuck on the top.

But I remember when I was a kid, they had, like, a really intricate design. Do

you remember that?

Yeah, I do, and the design has changed over the years.

If you look at the basement of the biscuit... You can see the little heart?

Yeah. Now that was something from the original design that we wanted to keep,

and it's not something that the consumer would necessarily see.

So obviously, sandwiched together, those hearts are never seen by the naked eye,

really. Yeah.

So why is that still there?

It's just part of our legacy.

Hell is for the way you look at me.

And why the art?

It's just a biscuit full of love. Oh, I love that. I love that.

So,

even

though I consider myself a biscuit expert, I had no idea they were made in

colossal amounts.

Without this level of production, none of us would have the choice we have when

it comes to biscuits.

Let's be honest, that wasn't worth thinking about.

But when did production on this scale begin?

Roof's in London to find out.

Nearly 170 years ago, a family of tea importers...

based near here on the South Bank of the Thames, decided to diversify and make

biscuits.

From the wharves and mills of the London docks, they had easy access to cheap

imported flour and sugar.

The company was called Peak Freen, and using the very latest steam -powered

machinery, their factories created some of the world's most famous biscuits.

right here in Bermondsey, an area that became known as Biscuit Town.

Food historian Mukta Das is giving me a peek inside the building that was once a

giant factory.

So, this biscuit factory was built in 1866, and we're standing in a

room that they would have used to sort out all the broken biscuits.

into packets and sold at the local market cheaply. This is quite late,

isn't it? When you think of when the Industrial Revolution starts, you know,

back in sort of 1700.

It's not until the mid -Victorian, 150 years later, that you start to get

industrialised food production.

We've had industrialised textiles, industrialised iron and steel, but food

really late to the party. That's right. So it's only really in the 1860s you get

a kind of level of industrialisation that created the snack biscuit.

This was one of the first factories.

who embraced technology to such an extent that this was purpose -built, how

these huge steam -powered turbines that would turn belts and conveyors and

cutting machines.

Before these newfangled machines, posh biscuits were the preserve of the

wealthy. But this technology meant that fancier snack biscuits like chocolate

digestives and complex sandwich biscuits like bourbons and custard creams...

could be produced on a huge scale, making them more accessible to all.

And their first bestseller in 1861 was the groundbreaking Garibaldi.

Quite innovative is that, with fruit in the middle and then two biscuits baked

together with flour from North America, fruit from the colonies. You know, this

is kind of an empire -building biscuit. It reflected global Britain of its time.

By the turn of the 20th century, Peekfreen was producing hundreds of

biscuits a year.

It was an incredible industrial success story, and Mukta has found an

extraordinary archive film that celebrated it.

So this is Peekfreen's Biscuit Factory right here, but in 1906.

Oh, my goodness.

An Edwardian inside the factory.

Oh, no, here we can see all the machines going.

Now, that is an Edwardian at the start, isn't it?

Very fine.

This is the cutting -edge technology, these sorts of rolling and mixing

machines. This is mass production.

For a mass market.

An oven that it just rolled through all by itself, cooking as it goes.

At its peak, the factory employed 4 ,000 people.

But like many in this early industrial era, there was little health and safety.

No guards on anything, no.

Belts running all over the place.

Gee, that place must have been dangerous.

Oh, my goodness, look at this little lad.

Oh, how old must he be?

In 1901, 22 % of boys in England aged between 10 and 14 were working.

Thankfully, that's a thing of the past.

In 1933, the Children and Young Persons Act set a minimum working age of 14, and

in 1972, that age was raised to 16.

The packing is all female.

100 % female. And again, young, look.

An entire community streaming out of the factory.

Here comes the finished product, look.

Horses and carts over the cobble.

And a couple of motorised vehicles too.

So this is right on the cusp, isn't it, when the first motor lorries are coming

in to replace the horse and cart.

It was a new era of the mass market.

with Peak Freen exporting affordable sweet treats from Biscuit Town right

the country and around the world from the nearby London docks.

The factory closed in 1989, but this remarkable film shows that it was right

the forefront of our mass -produced food revolution.

This is very much like those shots we have at the end of our programmes with

lorries bringing the produce out. It's exactly the same.

Just 118 years earlier.

And there's no dodgy comedian from Bolton.

Hey, no need, Ruth.

She's always so lovely on the telly.

The mass production of biscuits may not be a new thing, but here in Cwmbran,

they're certainly seen to have perfected the arts.

where I look in here. It's delightful.

And quite a few of the 700 strong team have dedicated years to topping up our

biscuits in.

How long have you worked here?

I've seen you about eight years. I've seen you about three.

It's 33 on you.

I've always been on this flight.

Just under two hard -working hours into production, my moulded door biscuits are

being swept along another conveyor into an oven.

And an epic oven it is.

It's the length of eight double -decker buses.

And it's where I find factory manager Rebecca.

This oven's got four guns.

And each zone has got a different purpose.

This is between zone one and two, okay?

Yeah, that door open, Rebecca. I need to see this.

So you can see you've got some lift on the biscuit.

Yeah. And this is because in that first zone, the virgin agents that we've put

in the product back at the mixing stage are starting to activate.

That rise will drop as the biscuit continues through the baking process.

We're not baking cakes, we're making biscuits, but it's essential that we get

that lift to make sure we get the right texture. OK.

The biscuits now pass through zones three and four, which are set to 235

degrees Celsius, reducing moisture levels to 2%. And after

a total bake of eight minutes, they exit the oven.

Oh, no.

These are the colours that I remembered.

Golden light, bro.

So the project at this stage is fully baked.

And one of the things that's really important at this stage is that we've

off enough moisture.

Yeah. Once the biscuit shell is baked and cooled and we add the jam, the jam

migrates liquid into the biscuit.

So if we haven't driven off enough moisture during the baking process,

up with a soggy biscuit, which is absolutely what we don't want.

No one wants that.

So if I take a biscuit off the line, really hot, about 90 degrees, but you'll

see that the texture at this point is still quite soft.

Yeah, it is. It's got it. Yeah, it's bendy. So how will that harden up?

Just as the biscuit cools.

So we've got around 80 metres of cooling conveyors, and it's no different to

what you would do on your wire wrap at home.

Can I try one of them?

You certainly can.

Mind your mouth. Warm, yeah.

What?

Good? Oh, absolutely.

And do you know what? With that...

You've obviously got the jam element, but that biscuit's actually delicious on

its own.

Off they go along the cooling conveyor, reducing temperatures from 90 to 35

degrees Celsius.

It actually feels a bit cooler here as well, doesn't it? And my biscuits are

ready to let loose.

Look at that.

So this is the start of our sorting process.

They've got all these biscuits coming through, but they're a mixture of tops

bottoms.

The tops and bottoms are clocked by hidden sensors and funnelled into

channels.

Right, Paddy, so they've been transferred then onto what we call a

Right, a V -belt. A V -belt, like the letter.

Oh, I know what a V is, Rebecca.

I know I'm from Bolton, but I know the alphabet.

Are you sure? Well, I've got half of it.

The V -belt moves the biscuits from flat to vertical, and as they glide along,

they get checked for defects by machine operator Richard Maggs.

How are you, Richard? How are you, pal? Are you OK, bud? Yeah, I'm OK.

Richard, how long have you been with us?

Ten years I've been using it. Now, ten years for someone working in a factory,

that's still a starter, isn't it? You're still considered like a newbie. A baby,

always learning me.

As well as removing any broken ones, Richard neatly levels the biscuits so

don't clog up the next machine.

Slightly stuck up. That'll absolutely cop that process up down there. Yeah, it

can do. And also, while we're here, we're looking for defect bits as well to

take them out.

Can I have a go at the old bit? Yeah, you can have a go at that. Oh,

what's this one?

What are you doing with that one?

Oh.

I'll give him up.

Fortunately, you don't win a prize.

That's how you are. Take that back.

I'm not interested in that.

Out of the pan. Here we go.

Come on.

Oh, go on, Paddy.

Sign you up now. You have a job, yeah?

I might do it again just to show it's not beginning as well.

Yeah. Here we go.

Hey!

That's how you walk.

That's made my day.

Smoothed and sorted, my biscuits move onwards.

OK, Paddy, so what we have here is the shuffleboard.

Well, we're all going to do that. That's it, shuffle it. There it is, there it

is, there it is, there.

Memes.

Memes. Memes.

Memes.

Everyone's going to wonder what's happened to this show.

And what this is doing is changing the orientation of the biscuits again.

Two metal plates on the shuffleboard move the biscuits into sets of tops and

bottoms.

And is there a reason why it's now bottom top, bottom top?

It's just getting ready to be presented to the jam.

I love that, being presented to the jam.

While we're here as well, Rebecca, I hope you don't mind, because I'm loving

jammy D's, but I did spot, further up there, another classic biscuit. Do you

mind if I go and have a quick look at it? Absolutely.

Right, all right, I won't be long.

While my biscuits are organised into purrs and head towards the jam.

I'm being pulled down memory lane.

Oh, look at that.

Wagon wheel.

You've got the biscuit base, you've got the chocolate, but the star of the show

is that lovely marshmallow in the middle.

Do you like this, Jerry?

Appreciate it.

Have you seen Jerry?

So that's all.

Socks off.

Give me a break, Paddy.

I really needed that.

But when you put marshmallows on the top, I'm sorry, it takes it to a whole

level. They are rather unusual.

They're soft and squishy, yet firm.

What are marshmallows anyway?

In search of sweet secrets, I've come to a rather special bakery near Leeds.

Definitely in the right place, because even the air tastes like sugar.

Una Sims is the marshmallowist. Oh, my God, Una.

I have died and gone to marshmallow heaven.

We really love marshmallows in this bakery. Clearly you do.

What a beautiful, floofy sight.

They are very soft and very fluffy.

There's nothing really like them.

And why is it called a marshmallow?

It's actually from the mallow plant.

A plant?

So this plant usually grows in sort of marshy areas.

Mars. You follow where we're going.

That is called a marshmallow because of that plant?

And it's grown all around the world. Asia.

Africa, Europe, even in the UK, it grows around like salt land areas, coastal

areas, marshes. Okay, how on earth do you get from that to that?

So the mallow plant has actually been used for thousands of years to make some

form of sweet treat.

So we use the root, which we dry up, and if you steep this in water, you get a

gloopy, like, viscous -y texture.

And in ancient Egypt, they used to incorporate this with honey, so it would

used as a sweet treat or even to cure sore throat.

The plant isn't used in modern marshmallows, so Una starts her recipe

types of sugar, including a very smooth liquid sugar known as invert.

This stops the crystallization of the sugar in the marshmallows.

So instead of getting a grainy marshmallow, we get a really smooth

We're making a cherry and rose -flavoured marshmallow.

Oh, lovely.

I'm going to take this up to a very specific 112 degrees. That is when the

starts forming with the water of the cherry puree and starts making the

strands and contains the right amount of moisture to make the best type of

marshmallows. What happens next? So this is where we're going to add our sheets

of gelatin.

So this is what replaces the mallow plant.

They're very weird, aren't they?

They're completely transparent, they're completely odourless, and they provide

the stability that we want in a marshmallow.

Gelatin is solid at room temperature, but turns liquid when heated in water,

the amino acid building blocks of its protein structure loosen.

It's then mixed into the hot, fruity concoction.

So all the strands of the amino acids, when it gets heated up, are all

and loosening. And then when it forms a solid, they're all coming back together

and binding up.

The gelatin and its flexible amino acid must be worked into the mix while it's

hot. This also fluffs it up before it cools down and sets hard.

And this is where we're going to put all the air bubbles into those trams that

when they reform, they'll be bouncy and fluffy.

You bring the air in. Exactly.

And then it gets cooler and then you trap it.

Exactly.

The stand mixer works away for ten minutes, quadrupling the volume of the

marshmallow mix.

It's completely changed texture. It's completely changed colour.

So as those amino strands are cooling down and they've incorporated all that

air, they're building this sort of scaffolding for making the foamy

that we want, that fluffy texture.

Una carefully judges the precise moment to stop mixing.

Before I pour out our puffed -up powder pink creation to set at room

temperature.

It doesn't get baked or you don't put it in a fridge or a freezer.

Nope. You just leave it so that the gelatin can do its work, harden up,

that really solid foundation so that those air bubbles are trapped forever.

Exactly.

The marshmallows take 12 hours to cool and set.

Then they're dusted with a confectioner's mix of icing sugar and

reduce stickiness.

We are going to cut them into little cubes.

Is that air bubbles popping?

Yeah.

So then, perfect, little marshmallows.

I need to have a go at this.

And there we have it.

There's some quite big holes here. Look at that one.

The gelatin has incorporated loads of air, so it's really light, and it's

soufflé -like in texture.

Oh.

Mmm. That is so fruity and intense, but it just disappears. The minute it hits

my tongue, it melts and disappears.

It's really velvety.

Do you know what? This reminds me of paddy.

Big, sweet, and soft on the inside.

Ah.

Ah, thanks, Jerry.

They do look good.

But I'm all about the biscuits.

And my shortcake bases are missing a very important component.

Biscuits everywhere.

Still not see any jam.

So, I'm following my nose to meet up with Rebecca.

I can already smell the jam.

And there are my tops and bottoms on their way to meet it.

This is it now.

Now it's becoming a reality.

Beautiful.

All right, we're coming.

I want a drama to do.

We're coming.

So what we have here is the compositor, and this has got built -in cameras.

So as the biscuit gases pass through, the cameras detect the biscuits and

they'll deposit the jam. Right. And temperature on depositing is absolutely

critical. So we'll open between 40 and 50 degrees.

If it's too warm, it's too runny, and it won't stay inside the well. Right. And

then we get the sticky bottom.

Yeah, we don't want that.

And if the jam is too cold... It won't be as free -flowing as it needs to be.

So we're changing temperatures slightly either side or ruin the biscuit.

Yes. Right, OK.

Exactly 4 .8 grams of extra smooth, warm raspberry

-flavoured jam is placed inside the moulded well on every biscuit base.

We've got some of the jam there, if you'd like to try it, Paddy.

I'm not really in the mood, Rebecca, if I'm being honest. Of course I want to

try it. Of course I want to try it.

This is actual jam out the middle of one of them little rascals.

Oh.

See, instantly, if I had a blindfold on and smelt that, I'd be saying it's a

jammy day.

There we go.

Oh.

This is not going to come out how I mean it, but it's a very childish jam.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I get that. It takes me back to my

childhood. It's a nice, a lovely flavour to it. It's not grown up.

Yeah. Fantastic.

Oh, my word.

In fact, I'd say, really, the only thing that's missing is the biscuit.

Yeah, what we need to do now is to put the top onto the bottom.

The jammies dotted onto the biscuit bases and small vacuum cups lift and

the tops to make the perfect sandwich.

Okay Paddy, so now you can see a finished biscuit?

Yes, fantastic.

Rows and rows of little jammy beauties.

And my six -year -old self would never forgive me if I didn't have a sneaky

taste of a warm Dodger straight off the line.

Feel free to try one.

Oh, thought you'd never ask. I'll go for that one there.

Oh. Is it good?

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

That's so good, that.

That's the freshest jammy dodger you'll ever eat.

Why are they called jammy dodgers?

Well, Roger the Dodger, who was in the Beano magazine.

He used to read Beano whenever he could. Yes, he was always up for an issue.

Okay? And he's always managing to be jammy enough to get himself out of

situations. So someone at the biscuit factory went, that's a bit of

that we're like that, and they formed the biscuit on the strength of that

Absolutely. That's amazing.

It is.

You know before when I said, say to the jam, I said, what's missing is the

biscuit. Now that we've got the jam and the biscuit, what's missing now,

Rebecca?

Come on.

Tea! Cup of tea!

Of course!

While we go and have a brew and enjoy these, Ruth's finding out how biscuits

boosted morale during World War II.

Come on, Rebecca.

We'll go anywhere, but we'll pretend, Rebecca. We'll pretend we'll just walk

like this.

In 1940, during the Second World War, Britain came under attack from German

bombers, causing devastation...

and costing the lives of tens of thousands of people.

As bombs fell across the country, the government feared that high casualty

numbers on the home front would lead to a collapse of morale and widespread

panic.

Volunteers like air raid wardens and firefighters were drafted in, but more

support was needed.

Historian Lucy Noakes has studied how spirits were lifted.

The whole point of air raids was to destroy morale.

It's targeted at ordinary people at home, in towns and cities.

And you just think, how would you cope in those situations?

Yeah, I think it was really, really difficult. But luckily there was a group

women who were ready to step up and try to help.

And they did it in vans like this.

A mobile canteen.

The Women's Voluntary Service, or WVF.

Have a tea, ladies.

Oh, yes, please. Thank you very much. This fits too.

Thank you.

The WVF, they organised blood transfusions, they helped to coordinate

evacuees, they amended uniforms, but one of their most important roles was...

keeping up morale during air raids.

Where a bomb has fallen, the mobile canteen manned by the WVS arrives with

inevitable prop to British morale, a cup of tea.

And tea wasn't their only weapon.

The ladies of the Women's Voluntary Service often provided biscuits.

Quite the treat during rationing.

Sugar was rationed from January 1940 because it was so hard to bring supplies

during the Beckenwald War. But although sugar was rationed, they tried really

hard to keep biscuits off the ration.

They decided that they would prioritise which servicemen, servicewomen,

firefighters would get biscuits.

I mean, air raid wardens, the volunteers who worked during the air raid, they

would get a cup of sweet tea with sugar and a couple of biscuits as a kind of

thank you for putting their lives on the line through the night.

By 1940, the WVS was running at least 700 canteens all over the

country.

And the Ministry of Information promoted the work of their brave recruits.

So... This was a woman called Patience Boo Brand.

Boo was her nickname, and so Patience was from a pretty posh background.

You would be with a nickname like that. Yeah, you absolutely would.

And you can see her here. So she's in front of a Women's Voluntary Service tea

van that was donated by the American Red Cross.

And you can see her helping dole out cups of tea to the Royal Engineers.

But because the WVS was a voluntary organisation, there was really very

in the way of kind of rank.

Everybody mucked in, and women came from all walks of life, and it was a way for

every woman to kind of join in and help in the war effort.

Often, women volunteers like Boo were on duty during the actual raids,

supporting the anti -aircraft gunner.

and giving tea and biscuits to people in shelters.

One of the country's most devastating raids took place on the 14th of November

1940, when hundreds of German bombers attacked the city of Coventry.

568 people were killed.

At the time, my grandparents were living there for war work, and my granddad.

He spent that night of the big air raid. He was on fire -watching duty on the

roof of the factory where he worked. But my grandmother would talk about the

next day in particular and just the streams of people leaving Coventry

they'd lost everything. They were leaving the city with absolutely

sometimes without even shoes on their feet.

You can get a sense of the devastation there. You can see how absolutely

flattened. And there's the man, WVS. Yeah, there they are.

The bombing of Coventry was so intense, so much was destroyed, that the local

WVS couldn't cope on their own. So these mobile vans came from all over the

country, and one of the volunteers with the Leicester van was a canteen worker

called Mrs Janet Waite.

She was dishing out tea and biscuits to the people of Coventry. In fact, they

had their own roll of honour, and you can see Janet Waite's name on there.

Janet Waits, canteen worker.

She'd been over to Coventry with other canteen workers, helping after their

first blitz. She returned home to sleep and was killed when her house was

destroyed by an HE.

HE, high explosives, that's a massive bomb of about 50 kilograms.

So this is a woman who's risked it by going into the centre of Coventry. She's

been doing her bit and then she gets home and she's killed immediately.

Yeah, killed in her own bed.

More than 240 members of the Women's Voluntary Service lost their lives.

Their work didn't stop with the end of the really heavy air raids. By 1942,

there were about 1 ,500 of these mobile canteens.

At least a million women volunteered with them, and it's said that they

about 10 ,000 people every night of the Blitz.

They really are the forgotten heroines of the Second World War.

This is where the bomb fell.

The wardens are gone and the demolition workers have taken over.

But the WVS are still there.

As long as men continue to work on a dusty job, the mobile canteen visits

every day.

Yeah, it's not a small thing. A cup of tea and a biscuit, it makes the

difference. It really does. It showed you that somebody cared. Someone was

and somebody cared.

After my own morale -boosting brew and biscuit, I'm also

ready for the final pour.

My finished biscuits are reporting for duty on a pretty impressive

parade ground.

Look at that!

This is our buffer room Paddy. How does it work in here then?

so if we've got a problem downstairs this conveyor belt actually extends out

what that does it gives us three and a half minutes of additional time i can

it moving a little bit yeah yeah a system of motors enlarges the

belt concertina style creating extra space so problems downstream could be

sorted without causing a jammy traffic jam on the line

When this is out at full length, there's about 5 ,000 biscuits that can be in

this room at any one time.

So they don't stop moving, it'll just get longer. Will that stretch right to

end? Right to the end.

So if I ever come in this room and this is right at the end, I know it's kicking

off. Yeah, we've had a small issue.

How many of these are going out every year?

These biscuits, around 274 million.

And from here, my little biscuits shoot off yet again.

They're flying down there, aren't they?

They're a bit like an air hockey table.

So it's using air to move the biscuits.

The belt gently floats them onto a dual carriageway of dodgers.

Then two sets of four are stacked with a cardboard base.

They're floor -wrapped into packs of eight.

and sealed at Volpe, before travelling on to Paki.

So this is our hand -packing station, Paddy.

Do you fancy having a go?

I do. Let me speak to experts first.

Hello. What's your name? Jenny.

Jenny, nice to meet you, Paddy. You OK?

All right. Now, how long have you been here, Jenny?

Just over 34 years. 34 years. Then I had some work here. That's where we met, in

fact, didn't you?

Yeah. 23 years ago. 23 years ago. That's the good thing about the factory, isn't

it? A big factory, you'll meet someone who you work with, and you end up

and you have kids. Sometimes the kids work here. Yeah. So I've been watching

there as I walk around. You're making it look very easy, but I'm sure it's not.

Now, firstly, Jenny's got...

A very specialist glove on here. Shall I swap these round? Yes, please, if you

wouldn't mind. Oh, there we go, there we go. Action!

Hey, come on.

We need to get a wriggle on here. We've got to get these bits here too.

Do you want me to have a go?

Yeah, I'll keep my mask up a minute.

Right.

Whoa! Is it three at a time? My God, come here!

Jenny's putting every minute of her 34 years of experience to good use.

She's like a biscuit ninja.

Jenny, I'm... How are you dropping them into quickly?

Three at a time. Six loads of three.

Yeah, but how are you keeping them... You're stacking up here.

Get hold of them.

Right, hang on.

Right, that's that. And they go underneath?

Yeah. Like that.

Right, here we go. What the hell?

Oh my God, I'm losing them. Jen!

Jen, I'm losing it.

Jenny! Jen!

Get them in, love.

Just get them in as best we can.

Sit on.

Right, have you asked enough?

Right.

I'll leave you to it. You're doing a great job.

I take it back.

I take it back.

I'm sorry about that. That's all Jenny's fault.

Right, good luck.

Thank you very much.

That's cost them a few packs.

Sorry, folks.

Right, see you later.

But Jenny quickly restores order.

And when the experts are in charge, 18 packets go neatly into each box.

Then my biscuits are stacked onto pallets before a fleet of forklift

whisk them off to meet the lorry.

So this is our dispatch area Paddy.

Get that.

There they go.

How many pallets are on there?

26 on a single decker.

So how many individual botches are on them pallets?

154. And dare I ask, how many is in total on the back of that then?

Just over half a million, Paddy. Wow.

The factory's capable of producing 2 .2 million jamming jobs per day.

Per day? Per day. So we would send four or five vehicles every day.

I'm not going to even attempt to top that up, but it's a lot.

Lovely driving.

Thank you.

Racing. Beautiful.

So that one's full up and ready to go now, Rebecca.

Yes, sure is.

Right.

Which one is it?

That's the car.

Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Down back.

Safe travels.

Oh, look here he's done.

Right, Rebecca, come on.

There's more tea to be drank, more biscuits to be eaten.

Two hours and 34 minutes after the start of production, my jammy biscuits are

leaving the factory.

From South Wales, they head out all over the country.

And these biscuits travel.

The lucky little dodgers are enjoyed as far away as Australia.

So, there you have it. Now you know exactly how these iconic biscuits are

2 .2 million leave this factory every single day, and I reckon half of those

to my house.

Right, where's Cherry?

Soon as I wake up every night.

Well, Amanda and Alan are in sunny Corfu, but it's past the summer holidays

their Greek job on BBC iPlayer.

Next year, the holidays are well and truly over. We're starting a new series

a new term at Waterloo Road.