The greater Wigan area west of Manchester is the centre of Britain’s political landscape due to the byelection this week involving Labour’s Andy Burnham.
The area is usually more famous in the north of England for something else. Wiganers’ neighbours don’t call the town’s denizens pie-eaters for nothing. The sniffy outsiders who coined the term meant it as an insult, but Wiganers have adopted it as a compliment.
Pies are an indomitable way of life up there. Last week, I was intent on living.
I spent the afternoon trailing five current and former Labour councillors, all from the Greater Manchester area, and one sitting MP, as they knocked on doors for Burnham. Yet it was all just a precursor for the most important event of the day: finding the perfect pie.
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None of my companions were native Wiganers – almost all were from Manchester and its nearer suburbs. Yet they were as determined as I was to hunt down the most famous local culinary delight, a pie dish known as the Wigan kebab.
A Wigan kebab is a meat and potato pie with pastry, stuffed inside a buttered bread cake known locally as a barm, all served with chips and gravy. It is as every bit as delightful and terrifying as it sounds – an explosion of carbohydrates to nourish the northern soul.
We set off in convoy for a famous Wigan chip shop, the Trawlerman. Then disaster struck. Somewhat incongruously, the Trawlerman closed for lunch – Wiganers must only eat pies for breakfast and tea. After a brief panic, my northern guides redirected our convoy to another nearby chippy in Bryn known as Mr English.
We strode through the door like men and women on a pie mission – the Magnificent Seven in search of carb heaven. The owner of the chip shop came out to say hello. Mr English turned out to be a Greek Cypriot, Costas, who had lived in Britain for 45 years.
“Can you do us a Wigan kebab, mate?” asked the most ebullient of our number.
Costas said he could make whatever we wanted: “I can do you a Babby’s Yed if you like.”
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A Babby’s Yed is another Wigan classic – no other town serves such a dish. It is a steak suet pudding with an indentation on the top that, locals believe, looks like a newborn baby’s head. The purpose of the indentation seems to be to pool gravy. It is sometimes served with chips and pey wet – the green juice from mushy peas.
I was practically vibrating with anticipation at the mere thought of a Babby’s Yed, when one of my Manchester friends dangerously upped the ante. He asked Costas if, instead of the Babby’s Yed, he could make us a normal Wigan kebab, but then deep fry it.
Mr English paused for a moment before accepting the challenge. Determined to get the full experience of culture by pie, I ordered the same monstrosity as my friend. The other five wisely demurred.
My ebullient friend wanted the entire thing deep-fried, barm ‘n’ all, but Costas said it would never hold together. So we settled instead for just deep drying the pastry pie, which came out of the oil looking like a big onion bhaji. It was served inside a big floury, buttered bread cake that in Ireland we would call a bap. To Wiganers it is a barm, but to people from Rochdale it is a muffin. In St Helen’s, I’m told, it is known as a bin lid.
Alongside my deep-fried Wigan kebab, Costas had very helpfully piled the chips on my plate higher than Scafell Pike. Instead of gravy, I asked for curry sauce. “You’ll be wanting the Irish curry sauce, then,” said the winking lady helping Costas to serve us.
Irish curry sauce? In most Wigan chippies, there are two types of curry sauce – sweet and spicy. In Mr English, they mix the two and call it Irish curry sauce. Nobody, including those making it, seemed to know why it was called that, and perhaps nobody ever will.
I slogged through my deep-fried Wigan kebab with its Munro of chips and lake of Irish curry sauce. I limped over the finishing line, utterly exhausted, but with a newfound respect for the strong bellies of Wiganers.
The town famously hosts the world pie-eating championships each December, a gladiatorial contest based not on volume, but speed – how fast can you scoff a pie? The rules say you can’t lubricate it with water or gravy – you must wolf it down dry. My friend, the Wigan kebab deep-fryer, said he had heard of an elite contender who quickened his times by removing all his false teeth to make more mouth-room for the pie.
Later that day, and still half in a food coma, I was meandering through Platt Bridge, another village near Wigan. A stout-looking man emerged from a parked car and walked towards a nearby chip shop.
There was a sticker on his car window: “No pies are left in this vehicle overnight.”
It was as amusing as it was utterly baffling. Yet increasingly I felt like I was beginning to understand these doughty Wiganers, the most facetious people of England’s north.
