The Factories

Amidst the bottle kilns of the Staffordshire potteries, it's not just the machinery that's revolutionary! With no break since leaving the 19th-century equivalent of the motorway services - the coaching inn - Alistair McGowan, Ann Widdecombe, Miquita Oliver, Zoe Lucker, Tyger Drew-Honey and Colin Jackson now have kilns to keep alight, clay to prep and pots to make. It's hard work for very little pay and dissent is in the air. Will our apprentice potters, like their forebears, take up the call to arms for better working conditions and pay?