4.4 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Leyla Kazim visits York, the UK's 'chocolate city', on the centenary of Joseph Rowntree’s death, to find out how the Quaker entrepreneur pioneered both social reform and iconic chocolate brands like Smarties and Kit Kat.
Today, many independent chocolate makers still call York home, as do some of the word's biggest multinational confectionary makers. Leyla Kazim wanders through York Chocolate Festival to trace the city’s unique chocolate heritage and find out what changed when global companies got involved.
As the so-called 'Dubai chocolate' drives a frenzy of demand for filled bars and imitations, Leyla meets a Newcastle chocolate maker with a penchant for wacky flavours and who inspired the original sell-out hit.
Leyla also hears how falling global production and high prices of cocoa could be the end of chocolate as we know it.
Produced by Nina Pullman for BBC Audio in Bristol.
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of ladies swindlers. |
0:07.5 | Promise never to mention a word of what is going on. |
0:10.1 | Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men. |
0:19.5 | This is a story of working class women trying to get by. |
0:24.4 | This is survival. |
0:25.3 | Join me for the second season of Lady Swindlers, where true crime meets history with a twist. |
0:31.4 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
0:36.4 | BBC Sounds, music, Radio, Podcasts. |
0:40.3 | Okay, here we go. So we are on a street and it's all open air and there are loads of chocolate stalls. |
0:48.3 | Chocolate sandwich. Hot grilled chocolate sandwich. Choose your filling. Flavoured sauce, dark chocolate. Okay. |
0:56.5 | Welcome to the food programme with me, Leila Kazim, where this week I begin in York in the north of England at the city's annual chocolate festival. |
1:08.4 | So we have dark milk, white, I have a special coffee chocolate and a Ruby chocolate. |
1:15.6 | And a what chocolate? |
1:16.6 | Ruby. |
1:17.6 | Have you tried Ruby? |
1:18.6 | Which pink naturally has a kind of red fruit flavour to it. |
1:21.6 | So just put it in your mouth, let it dwell. |
1:23.6 | Don't chew it. |
1:24.6 | And as it warms up to your body temperature, it will then start to give you |
1:29.0 | the flavours. Oh yeah, there it is. It's no coincidence that this festival is taking place in |
1:37.0 | York, which was and still is home to some of the biggest chocolate makers in the world, as well as a thriving community of |
1:47.0 | independence with their stalls on display today. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.