“Naaah! That’s ridiculous! Whoa! It’s cutting out the grooves of your bum! It’s creating space for each cheek! I love this!” If you thought Gregg Wallace went into rhapsodies about chocolate fondant on MasterChef, wait until you see him encounter a power tool making a seat on Inside the Factory (BBC Two).
Wallace loves this show. He loves everything he sees, everywhere he goes. He’s like a toddler charging around Peppa Pig World, drunk on Haribo, a delirious smile never leaving his face. “There’s steam and there’s cutters and there’s hammers and there’s lumps of metal!” he yells, during his stint at the Ercol furniture factory in Princes Risborough. Steam is used to bend the wood into shape to form the curved back of the company’s Windsor chair. “No! That’s ridiculous! That is ridiculous!” Like a small child, he peppers the adults with questions. “How much pressure is in that spray gun? What is that lacquer made from? Where do babies come from?” (OK, not the last one.)
Co-presenter Cherry Healey also aims for this level of manic enthusiasm, but she can’t match it. She can hit the level of his terrible jokes, though. “I know they’re called tree fellers and I’m a girl, but can I still join in?” she said to a man in a forest, where they are felling ash trees. He smiled politely.
This programme is over-long at an hour. Half an hour would probably do it. (Although I did enjoy historian Ruth Goodman telling us about the 1940s Utility Furniture Scheme.) Over on CBeebies, there is an excellent series called Maddie’s Do You Know? which does the same thing but covers it all in 15 minutes.
Inside the Factory is at its best when doing food; there is something fascinating about seeing how a fishfinger gets made. Chairs don’t have quite the same appeal, but the Windsor is such an elegant, simple piece of furniture that it was satisfying to watch the manufacturing process. Well, satisfying for us – thrilling for Wallace. “I loved doing all that,” he said dreamily, as he exited the factory holding a chair he’d made all by himself.
