Catch up TV

Series 6: 2. Socks

To keep their feet nice and warm, the British spend almost 723 million pounds a year on socks! In the second episode of this new series, Gregg Wallace visits a sock factory in Leicester that produces one and a half million socks annually. This atmospheric factory is a fascinating mix of Wallace and Gromit-style and high-tech machinery, with a close-knit team of highly skilled operators.\n\nElsewhere in the episode, Cherry Healey finds out what causes smelly feet and pounds the pavements to test out which socks best tackle this stinky situation. She visits a cotton spinning factory in Manchester, whose high-tech machinery produces 4,200 miles of yarn every hour, and meets a revolutionary eco cotton supplier.\n\nHistorian Ruth Goodman steps back into the 1980s, when socks were at the height of fashion. And she ventures further back to the Great War, when the ‘Kitchener stitch’ helped to save the feet of British soldiers in the trenches.

Source: BBC 2