*I'm going to define the essence of this sprawling place as best I can.
I'm going to start here, in this village, and radiate out like a ripple
in a pond. I don't want to go to the obvious places, either; I want to
be like a bus driver on my first morning on the job, getting gloriously
lost, turning up where I shouldn't. I'm going to confirm or deny the
clichés, holding them up to see where the light gets in. Yorkshire
people are tight. Yorkshire people are arrogant. Yorkshire people eat a
Yorkshire pudding before every meal. Yorkshire people solder a t' before
every word they use...
*
If there were such a thing as a professional Yorkshireman, Ian McMillan
would be it. He's regularly consulted as a home-grown expert, and
southerners comment archly on his 'fruity Yorkshire brogue'. But he has
been keeping a secret. His dad was from Lanarkshire, Scotland, making
him, as he puts it, only 'half tyke'. So Ian is worried; is he Yorkshire
enough?
To try to understand what this means Ian embarks on a journey around the
county, starting in the village has lived in his entire life. With
contributions from the Cudworth Probus Club, a kazoo playing train
guard, Mad Geoff the barber and four Saddleworth council workers looking
for a mattress, Ian tries to discover what lies at the heart of
Britain's most distinct county and its people, as well as finding out
whether the Yorkshire Pudding is worthy of becoming a UNESCO Intangible
Heritage Site, if Harrogate is really, really, in Yorkshire and, of
course, who knocks up the knocker up?
