Inside the factory is back with Series 5 — and the focus this time is on the skills, scale and technology that go into making your favourite foods and goods. Ruth Goodman, the presenter of the show, is a British historian of the early modern period, specialising in offering advice to museums and heritage attractions.
She is a specialist in British social history and after presenting the 2005 TV series, Tales from the Green Valley, went on to participate in all six of the BBC historic farm series.
Ruth participated in the 2011 series of Celebrity MasterChef UK and since 2015, has presented segments in the BBC series, Inside the Factory.
In Series 5 of the show, MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace gets exclusive access to the largest factories in Europe, and uncovers the astonishing processes that keep high-volume manufacturing on track.
He lifts the lid on a range of products including cherry Bakewell tarts, croissants, high-end wax jackets, and mattresses.
Outside the factory, Cherry Healey investigates the science and innovation behind each product, while Ruth reveals how the products were invented and popularised.
We got to have a short chat with Ruth about the show, and also about her new book. Excerpts:
What are you most excited for Indian audiences to see in Series 5 of the show?
That’s difficult! I think there’s such a lot of interesting subjects here… a little bit of this and a little bit of that, it quite varies. And I hope that the Indian audience finds it interesting, very much so, as it’s a little bit for everybody.
Can you tell us about some of the interesting sights we will get to see?
We get to do all sorts of things! Of course, because I worked on the history part of the show, I didn’t actually get to go inside the main factories… I was busy hunting out the little history stories. And they have been very varied. That’s what I particularly enjoyed the most.
Are there any particular factories that you are looking forward to see on the show?
I look forward to all of them. I think each one of them is so very different that you never quite know which aspect you’re going to see next. So while the main factory may well be looking at something like instant coffee, I might then have to go out and look at French warfare, or something like that. It can be very, very varied, and I also don’t know until we set out, quite where we’re gonna go — it can be a bit of a surprise for me (laughs).
What is your research process like, when you detail the histories of products?
I think the purpose of it is to just expand, my own and everybody else’s understanding of the world — to sort of see how things have come to be the way they are now. I think, if you look at the past — things that made us go this way, and things that made us go that way… and what all of that tells us is that our world was built this way. But it could be built in another way!
And that’s what I really hope social history in general is all about, it’s about asking questions, powerful questions — Why is something built like this? Could it be different? Things have been done in many different ways in the past, and there were many different reasons, and if we move forward into the future we can change those reasons and change the way we are doing things.
I think history is quite radical, in that sense. History said, ‘We are people, we have the power to make changes’. So that really is what my research process is. The more you learn about the world, the more you learn about everything around you, the more information you have, the more able you are to make your own choices, to make your decisions, and to make your own future.
Being an accomplished author as well, tell us what’s new for you on the literary front?
I’ve just finished writing a book about a major change in domestic lives that first came from Britain, and how that change moved out to other parts of the world. I’ve been writing about the change in fuel — from wood as the fuel to cook with, to coal — and how that changed the food, and also changed the way we cleaned up, and the way that soap became important. And the ideas about what clean means that were exposed right around the world. So yes, I’ve been writing!Watch Series 5 of Inside the Factory on Sony BBC Earth.
