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.

Chocolates are an essential part of many people's festive celebrations. In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace visits a factory which produces a staggering 2,000,000 tins of festive chocolate assortments a year. At materials intake, he receives 20 tonnes of liquid chocolate at 50 degrees Celsius. This is used in 10 of the 12 sweets in the tin. Everyone has their favourite - for Gregg it's the purple-wrapped caramel-coated hazelnut - and he follows the supersized batches of the toffee, orange and strawberry varieties on their journey from tanker to tin. In just one hour, 800 kilos of toffee are cut into precise 10mm x 55mm sticks before they disappear under a chocolate waterfall. Meanwhile, the orange centres make an epic 45-minute journey along 400 metres of conveyors, and 115,000 strawberry fondants head into wrapping, where 5,500 individual chocolates are packaged and dropped into tins every minute, ready to put colour into Christmas across the UK. Cherry Healey is producing other festive treats. She travels to Germany - the home of so many of our Christmas traditions - where she joins a crew of 35 ornament decorators, applying glitter and paint to an army of glass Santas. In the UK, she goes behind the scenes at the Royal Mail as the Christmas stamps are printed. They'll grace the envelopes of around 1,000,000,000 cards this year. She also learns some tricks for perfecting gingerbread, but rather than a house, she produces a gingerbread factory complete with biscuit versions of her co-presenters. She's even got your Boxing Day leftovers sorted, bottling up 250 jars of spiced Christmas chutney. Historian Ruth Goodman is on the trail of the Christmas turkey. It's a tradition that begins way back in the 16th century, when these birds were first introduced from Mexico. But at the equivalent of £450 per bird, only the richest could afford them. It wasn't until the 1950s that selective breeding made them truly affordable for the masses. And this year we'll tuck

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

Gregg Wallace is in Nottingham at an enormous party food factory where they produce 200,000 canapes every 24 hours. Cherry Healey discovers fail-safe scientific methods for cooking the perfect turkey, then heads to a traditional candle makers in Wiltshire to learn the ancient technique of hand-dipping. Historian Ruth Goodman finds that, while bringing mistletoe inside at Christmas dates back to pagan times, the tradition of kissing beneath it is much more recent.

As many UK factories face unprecedented demand, Gregg Wallace catches up with some of the factory workers who are toiling around the clock to make sure our cupboards are stocked.

As many UK factories face unprecedented demand, Gregg Wallace catches up with the baked beans factory producing 15 million tins in a week.

Gregg reconnects with the Typhoo Tea factory in the Wirral. The coronavirus crisis caused tea bag sales to soar, and the tea factory have upped production to produce 109 million tea bags in a week.

Gregg Wallace reconnects with the McVitie's factory in Harlesden, London, who sold an astonishing 12.5 million packets in just two months during the coronavirus crisis.

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.