A jacket potato seller has been dubbed the new 'Binley Mega Chippy' after becoming a global TikTok sensation attracting visitors from across the world.
Ben Newman - aka Spudman - has seen customers queuing for up to three hours to get their hands on his famous spuds in the quaint market town of Tamworth, Staffs. Via SWNS
Ben Newman - aka Spudman - has seen customers queuing for up to three hours to get their hands on his famous spuds in the quaint market town of Tamworth, Staffs. Via SWNS
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00:00 I'm having...
00:02 Anything else?
00:03 No but on the other one.
00:04 Yeah.
00:05 I want cheese and...
00:06 Kerry, Hannah from Mansfield.
00:08 It took us an hour and ten minutes to get here.
00:11 Juicy.
00:13 Did you have a drink?
00:14 No.
00:15 We didn't, we planned to.
00:16 Oh!
00:18 Need a bag?
00:19 Yes please.
00:20 Fanta from Tito, where Tater Man is, and I'm going to enjoy my dinner today from here.
00:25 Tuna please.
00:26 Cheese and tuna, no butter.
00:29 Been here 21 years, in Tamworth.
00:32 Why did we get started on social media?
00:36 Came back after Covid and we needed to let people know we were here basically.
00:41 So it was, how are we going to do this?
00:43 One of my lads put TikTok in front of me.
00:46 We made a few videos and I think my second or third video got half a million views.
00:50 And it opened my eyes to the power of TikTok and social media and never looked back really.
00:56 We posted every day, you know, three, four, five videos every day on TikTok.
01:01 And we've grown this amazing following.
01:04 And then all of a sudden in October, video after video after video started going viral.
01:12 One of them nearly 100 million views.
01:23 People genuinely see how much I enjoy my job.
01:26 And I love coming to work and I love serving the people of Tamworth.
01:29 Obviously our lovely jacket potatoes.
01:35 These are grown 10 miles away.
01:37 Local farmer that we use.
01:39 We use a variety called Melody.
01:41 Really nice, really nice one.
01:44 What do we put on it?
01:46 We've got beans, curry, chilli, minced beef, pulled pork, coleslaw, tuna mayo, sweet corn and cheese, of course.
01:56 We like to support local farmers.
02:08 I grew up, my grandad was a farmer and so supporting local is, you know, essential to us as well.
02:15 It is nice to keep the money in the area.
02:19 So the free day was an idea I had six months ago before we really went viral.
02:33 And it was a nice way to give back to the community.
02:37 Basically, we just wanted to give everyone we possibly could a jacket potato for free.
02:45 It grew into a far bigger event than I ever thought it would.
02:48 We had queues of nearly four hours long at one point.
02:51 We served 2,200 potatoes in five hours, which is no little accomplishment.
03:00 I'm sure there's some kind of world record in there somewhere.
03:03 Amazing atmosphere.
03:04 We raised nearly £11,000 for kidney research.
03:12 It's charity very close to my heart.
03:14 I've been on dialysis for 12 years and three failed transplants.
03:18 So yeah, kidney research is a big thing for me.
03:21 And it also brings so much trade to Tamworth.
03:29 Yes, we were giving away freebies, but I spoke to the other food vendors
03:33 and they were all busy and had really good days for the time of year.
03:37 So it was really nice to see Tamworth buzzing and lots of people coming in and spending their money.
03:43 Yeah, it was good. It was fun times.
03:46 Hi, I'm April. I heard about this through TikTok and we're from Telford.
03:50 And we came up today to just give it a go.
03:52 I've got a jacket potato with tuna and cheese.
03:55 And we probably only queued for about 10 minutes to get it.
03:58 Hi, we're from Birmingham. My name's Jason.
04:05 Hi, I'm from Birmingham. My name's Sue.
04:07 And we're here to enjoy the lovely spud from Spudma.
04:10 I've got cheese and coleslaw.
04:12 And I've got pulled pork and cheese. It's lovely.
04:15 It's lovely.
04:17 [Tram sounds]
04:19 The queue's not going to end in a minute now.