Ello, ello, ello.

We’ve been on the beat with a bobby again – Yorkshire bobby turned author, Mike Pannett, that is. Regular readers might have read about Mike here before as we’ve been working with him for a good while now – he’s even been in to do a private reading for the Fondant Fancies, our very own workplace WI.

This time we’ve been touring the country with Mike to spread the word about his latest book, Not On My Patch Lad, which is filled with tales from his days policing North Yorkshire. Not only that but we’re in it too – Mike was so appreciative of our help with his last book that he’s thanked us in the new one. We’re very honoured.

Mike spent many years down south working for the Metropolitan Police before eventually heading back to his home county, but far from finding a more peaceful life, he quickly discovered that policing the dales was no picnic. His books draw on his many experiences, both warmly funny and deadly serious, and make for a riveting read.

So with Little Urn in tow to ensure there was plenty of tea to go round, we’ve been meeting people at supermarkets and bookshops, giving them a chance to meet the man himself and even pick up a signed copy of his book. And we had a great time doing it too!

If you missed the tour and would love a signed copy of Mike’s book, we’ve got some good news for you. We’ve got ten signed first-edition copies of Not On My Patch Lad to give away. For chance to win, email our Liz with the answer to the following question by Wednesday 15th September.

Which police force did Mike serve in prior to joining North Yorkshire police?

Good luck everyone – and don’t forget to include your contact details!

For competition T&Cs click here.

Allow us to explain. The 75 year old in question is actually the De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex, a great event and exhibition space you might remember reading about on our blog a few months ago.

Following their successful Wallace & Gromit weekend last Christmas we jumped at the chance to help them celebrate their 75th anniversary this Bank Holiday weekend – so we’re sending loads of tea and cake to help their tea party go with a swing.

As well as inviting people to come and help them recreate this vintage group photo shown above (which originally appeared in the Daily Mirror in 1936) there will also be street-party dancing with tunes from DJ Nikki Beatnik, parkour displays from Urban Shadows and loads more entertaining stuff. To find out more about the event, click here.

To say thanks for providing tea party goodies, the DLWP folk have given us 5 pairs of these great 75th anniversary mugs to give away. For a chance to win, just email your contact details to our Liz with the subject line ‘Mugs’ by 12pm on Wednesday 25th August.

For competition T&Cs click here.

“Someday you will find me, caught beneath a landslide…”

Regular readers of our blog will know all about our celebrity fanbase. It’s quite a varied bunch, consisting of characters that range from 83-year old film-maker Ken Russell to unpredictable songstress Amy Winehouse. In terms of singing our praises, though, ‘rock & roll star’ Noel Gallagher takes some beating.

Not only has the ex-Oasis star frequently discussed his love for Yorkshire Tea live on Radio 1 with his DJ friend Chris Moyles (also a big fan), but now he’s picked our tea to feature with him in a gorgeous new photography book called Love Music Love Food.

A unique collection of portraits of musicians posing with their favorite food or drink, Love Music Love Food is a charitable project supporting the Teenage Cancer Trust, which helps improve the life and chances of survival for young people with cancer. All proceeds from the book go to the trust -  so it’s a lovely idea and a very good cause too.

Less hard rock and more hard water these days, Noel is pictured with a cup of his favourite brew attached to a special cupholder on his mike-stand, while another photo shows Yorkshire Tea teabags spilling out of his guitarcase.

As ever we’re blown away by Noel’s support, and chuffed to be associated with such a cracking project. Thanks Noel!

Just goes to show – Yorkshire Tea beats ‘cigarettes and alcohol’ any day!

Like most people, we like having people round for tea. Especially when they’re as nice as Yorkshire cricketer Joe Sayers, who popped in yesterday to meet our expert tea buyers.

Over the years, we’ve had a wide variety of visitors here in Harrogate, from Prince Charles to Rwandan tea farmers. And each visit is special in its own way – in this case, opening batsman Joe came in to talk to us about our Runs For The Rainforest idea.

Basically, for every run scored by Yorkshire in the 2010 season, we promise to protect a tree in the Peruvian Amazon – all as part of the Yorkshire Rainforest Project, our pledge to save an area of rainforest the size of Yorkshire.

Joe, who scored over 1,000 runs in last year’s season, has really got behind the idea. “Every player always wants to score plenty of runs,” he said. “But now there’s an extra incentive.”

As well as talking to us about the project, Joe also got the chance to meet our Head of Tea, Ian, who showed him round our tea tasting room, where Ian and his team taste literally hundreds of teas every day. Both Joe and Ian have spent a fair bit of time in India (for different reasons obviously) so they had plenty to talk about. Not only that but Joe got a whistlestop tour of the world of tea, and even joined in with some tasting – quite an odd sight to see a professional cricketer in his whites slurping and spitting tea!

It wasn’t all hard work though. He got his very own box of ‘Sayer’s Tea’ and we made sure he got a chance to sit down and have a proper cup of tea before setting off – but no spitting this time.

Like a lot of people out there, we’re already looking forward to this year’s Great British Tea Party – and one of the people who makes it all happen is our friend Marie at the Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Foundation. Not only is she busy getting ready for the Great British Tea Party, but she’s organising Wrong Trousers Day too. In fact, she’s already been out having some fun with our favourite characters.

If you’d like to support Marie and the lovely people at the Wallace & Gromit Children’s Foundation, join Wallace & Gromit’s Wrong Trousers Day on Friday 25^th June and help sick children in the UK by registering here.

As well as supplying various Womens Institutes with tea for 20 years and working with lots of them to do good things around the world like planting trees, we also have our own workplace WI – the Fondant Fancies.

Ladies from all around our business get together several times a year to meet, chat and do something interesting, whether that’s learning how to salsa or mastering the art of basic car maintenance!

Recently they had a visit from a Yorkshire bobby. And before you say it, no, they hadn’t been up to  mischief (at least as far as we know). The bobby in question was Mike Pannett, local policeman turned author.

Following a turn on the BBC’s Country Cops, Mike’s written a collection of amusing tales from his time spent policing in North Yorkshire. We supported him on his tour of the nation’s bookshops earlier this year so he was more than happy to treat our Fondant Fancies to a reading from his book ‘You’re coming with me lad‘. This special visit was followed by a Q&A session and a book-signing too.

To celebrate the forthcoming publication of Mike’s new book ‘Not on my patch lad’, we’re giving away ten signed copies of ‘You’re coming with me lad’. For a chance to win, just email your contact details to our Liz with the subject line ‘Fondant Fancies’.

Our expert tea buyers are used to discovering talented people with quality products when they’re travelling the world. Usually it’s tea they’re after – but in the case of the Bodo Handloom Scheme in Assam, we simply had to make an exception!

From left to right: Homeshwari, Mina, Rita (wearing the Yorkshire Gold Apron!) and Tulu of the Bodo Handloom Scheme

The Bodo (pronounced Bo-ro) people are an indigenous ethnic group from the north bank of Assam’s Brahmaputra river. The ladies of the Bodo people are incredible weavers and make the most intricate, colourful designs with a handmade bamboo handloom. The amazing thing is that none of their many designs are written down or recorded anywhere. Instead they’re passed from generation to generation through the female members of the household.

The Bodo Handloom Scheme was established in 1995 at the Borengajuli Tea Estate to promote the ladies’ traditional weaving skills and provide access to market for generating extra income. It’s a not-for-profit scheme funded by estate owners  McLeod Russel India Ltd, with the ladies earning over 40% of the total cost of the finished product.

We started working with the scheme a year ago, when we asked them to use traditional Bodo designs to produce beautiful aprons with colour schemes that match Yorkshire Tea and Yorkshire Gold. Tea buyer Suzy took time out from her recent training in Assam to visit the villages of Borengabari, Nisputla and Tutlapara so she could meet the ladies in person, see them at work, and have a look at the finished results.

Suzy with Rehama Dwiamary, one of the talented ladies who made the fabric for the Yorkshire Gold Aprons

“I’m not sure I have the right words to do the enormous skill of the Bodo weavers’ justice,” says Suzy. “The aprons are 100% natural cotton and made from 100% sheer skill! To achieve a golden colour that matches our Yorkshire Gold, the ladies blend yarn together. The weave starts out as a red, light weave and when yellow is woven over the top diagonally you get a gold effect. ”

From what started as a cottage industry supplying the local tea fraternity of Assam, we’re proud to bring the work of the Bodo Handloom Scheme to the UK for their international commercial debut. We’re covering the cost of production of the aprons and all profit made through the sale of these traditionally woven items will go directly back to the scheme to help secure sustainable long term production, assisting the livelihoods of these incredibly talented women.

Meet Annie and Horen. Annie co-ordinates the scheme: arranging orders, sourcing the yarn and putting together the colour combinations and styles for market. Horen makes sure the finished products are perfectly packaged and ready to go.

We’re hoping that the first batch will arrive in Harrogate soon, and they’ll be available to buy on our website shortly, priced at £12. Or come along and find our Yorkshire Tea trailer at any of the events we’re attending and you can pick them up for a bargain £10 each!

Huge thanks go to all the people at the Bodo Handloom Scheme and McLeod Russel India Ltd for helping to turn this lovely idea into a reality.

Earlier this month, we told you about our Sam’s trip to the Peruvian Amazon. To help with our Yorkshire Rainforest Project, she was off to meet with the people on the ground who we’re working with, and to stay with the Ashaninka – the communities who live in the rainforest. After so long with no contact (she was in the rainforest after all) we’re rather relieved to hear she’s alive and well and back in Lima. Here’s what she had to say:

“Wow, what an amazing trip! From being thrown into a bustling, congested, polluted Lima to sleeping through a drive over the Andes, then waking up to a vast, cloud covered, lush green rainforest.

Sailing down the Rio Ene and through the Amazon is nothing short of spectacular – you see life in abundance and it was clear on arrival at the first community, Puerto Ashaninka, that this is not taken for granted. We were offered (literally) the fruits of the forest, from coconuts to oranges to yucca (an Ashaninka diet staple), fish and samani, a small boar.

And of course the first bowl of the infamous ‘spit beer’, masato, was passed around. I have to say it tastes a little better than I imagined it would – but it comes in all sorts of strengths so it’s wise to take caution. This community, as with each one we visited, was generous, kind and keen to make the most of their natural surroundings – incredible to see when back in England we are so far removed from the source of our food, housing, water etc. And yet it became clear from early on that the threats to their very way of being (one Ashaninka child, Nike, told me that to be Ashaninka means to be a person of the forest) are very real and getting more serious. It was enlightening, though, the work that the Ashaninka are putting in to combat these threats and look after their home.

CARE, the team on the ground who we’re working with, have done a lot of work in a short space of time on the project. It’s great to be able to see some results – especially from the sustainable livelihoods programme.

Look out for lots more info on this and many other things when I get back to Harrogate next week!

It’s giveaway time on the blog once again. Not only that, but it’s giveaway time for the Baby Show… again! This time we’re offering pairs of tickets to the Baby Show, the UK’s biggest event dedicated to babies and pregnancy. Taking place at the Birmingham NEC from Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd May, it’s great for anyone who’s expecting or already has little ones.

Yorkshire Tea decaf is a big hit with mums who want to cut down on caffeine but don’t want to settle for a second-rate cup of tea, so we’ll be there spreading the word and giving out free samples, alongside many of the best baby and parenting brands.

The event promises to be a fantastic shopping experience where you can test out the latest products for little ones, and take the opportunity to speak to expert midwives, nursery nurses and, of course, fellow mums and dads. February’s show in London featured TV presenter and mum Tess Daly, baby expert Miriam Stoppard, nutrition expert Annabel Karmel, breast-feeding guru Clare Byam-Cook and others all taking to the stage to share their collective wisdom, so these shows are not to be missed!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show, just send an email titled ‘Baby Show’ to our Sam with the answer to the following question:

What colour is the stripe on a box of Yorkshire Tea Decaf?

The Baby Show 2010 takes place at NEC, Birmingham, (21-23 May) and at London’s Earls Court, London (22 – 24 October). Tickets are available now and can be ordered from www.thebabyshow.co.uk

Little Urn has just enjoyed a lovely scenic trip to stunning Dalby Forest for this year’s Mountain Bike World Cup.

Our Liz and Laura took Little Urn down to the forest just outside Pickering in North Yorkshire, and had a great time meeting the VIPs, and sharing tea and cake in the lovely sunshine.  Everyone looked like they were having a great time including the hundreds of ‘Dalby Dare’ amateur riders who powered their way round the mountain bike course. Congratulations to everyone who took part – we hope to see you again next year!

You can find out more about the event here.