Inside the Factory

Documentary series. Gregg Wallace joins a human production line in the largest sports shoe factory in the UK to see how they produce three and a half thousand pairs of trainers every 24 hours by sewing 32 million individual stiches and using 140 miles of thread. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets hands on in a tannery to help them process thousands of rawhides into finished leather for the nation's shoes, and finds out how a ballet shoe company painstakingly turns 37,000 square meters of satin into a quarter of a million ballet shoes - some of which only last for one performance. She also gets to design her own court shoes at Cordwainers College in London. And historian Ruth Goodman reveals how, when the sewing machine was first introduced into shoe factories in the mid 19th century, traditional shoemakers went on strike, rebelling against joining a restrictive production line. She also traces the surprising origins of the humble trainer.