Daft Yorkshire Inventions - Tapa dura

Ian McMillan - "One of my all-time heroes - he's such a talented bloke, I could kill him"! --Mike Harding (BBC Radio 2's Folk Show & Rochdale Cowboy)

"Tony Husband is even funnier than me"! --Griff Rhys Jones

Today in Yorkshire we take so much for granted .... it's difficult to imagine a world without the gadgets and tools created by our imaginative forefathers which make daily life in the county even better than it is. For example, how would we cope on a Sunday without our Self-Mixing Yorkshire Pudding Machine? How would we spot southerners without our Aye Detector? And how could the few who venture outside the county's border exist without a packet of Instant Yorkshire Powder or a dab of Essence de Yorksher? That is what Ian McMillan, the Bard of Barnsley, has been pondering. Within these pages, Ian's fertile imagination pays homage to the talented and visionary inventors who've created all manner of remarkable contraptions, illustrated by Tony Husband's humorous cartoons. There's the Patent Wallet Clamp, the Barnsley Cloak of Invisibility, Steam Clogs, the Ferret Bike, the Self-Lifting Settee, the Pen That Writes Reyt ..... you'll wonder how you managed without them!