John Shepherd, owner of Partridges in Chelsea, on the World Chelsea Bun Awards and a campaign to save the pastry, backed by MP Greg Hands.
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00:00 Greg Hands is a very hard-working local MP and is keen to support community events.
00:08 And he's joined with us in this campaign because he's identified that the Chelsea Barn has fallen into some obscurity,
00:16 but it's a proud product of this area over many centuries and it would be very good to revitalise it.
00:24 And firstly to start a campaign by all the local bars and restaurants in the area do offer a Chelsea Barn,
00:31 at least for the period around Easter because that's when they sort of came into their own historically.
00:36 And so it's very good to have his support. We support members of Parliament from all parties,
00:41 but he is a particularly hard-working and active one in this area and so we're very glad he's put his weight behind the campaign.
00:49 Historically they were quite thick buns and quite stodgy as well, so that when you had eaten one they were quite heavy in the stomach.
01:01 And they basically are made up of cinnamon and raisins and they also have sort of been replicated.
01:12 There's a lot of other cinnamon buns around from Scandinavia and so I think they've been surpassed in that field as well.
01:19 But we are baking them up now, so for next week we're going to launch them with our sort of revised recipe.
01:26 But the purpose of the Chelsea Barn is to actually encourage people to bring in a bit of innovation
01:31 so that we can make them even more palatable to the modern taste.
01:35 And that rather than being a historic bun that we might associate with school days or in the very distant past,
01:41 they become some sort of light alternative to a lot of the other buns that have sort of taken its place.