Following on from the last post about Faggots, I remembered that it used to be rumoured that the Ham burger was originally invented in the Black Country. The story went like this.
The History of the Ham Burger
In 1925 on a cobblestone street in Dudley, butchers boy “Billy King” rode his delivery bike. His cargo of freshly made Black Country faggots sat proudly in the bicycles wicker basket.
His bicycle ran over a discarded horseshoe. Hiss!! His front tyre sprung a leak.
He placed the faggots on a nearby wall, removed the tyre and repaired the puncture in double quick time. Unfortunately a gang of grubby urchins from the Priory came along and set about him.
They called him a Wimp. in fact he was such a weakling that his nickname at school was “Wimpy King”. They pushed him backwards against the wall and he landed on the faggots and squashed them flat.
Disaster! What should he do, he decided to ride on to his destination or he would have been in great trouble back at the Butchers shop.
He finally arrived at Mrs McDonalds house and presented her with the tray of squashed faggots.
She stared at the tray in disbelief.
The faggots were for a special evening supper party she was holding in her garden for the orphans of Dudley.
“What shall I do” she exclaimed.
“I know I’ll put them in a bread roll and call them? O bugger what can I call them” she said.
“That’s it, I’ll call them buggers, Ham buggers,” she cried in her strong Scottish accent
She clipped the butcher’s boy around the ear and sent him packing, then proceeded to cook the squashed faggots on an open fire in the garden.
The Orphans enjoyed the Buggers so much that it became a regular trip to Mrs McDonalds every Saturday to saviour the tasty delights.
She felt a sense of pride as she watched the skinny orphans start to put a bit of meat on their bones.
Mrs McDonald would sometimes give away a toy with her Ham buggers, perhaps a spinning top or a hoop & a stick.
Her Ham buggers became famous through out the Black Country and indeed all the land.
Her nephew Ronald was travelling on a World tour with the circus as a clown and so it was that her Ham buggers reached the shores of America in his packed lunch.
The Ham buggers became an overnight success with the Americans and Ronald set up restaurants through out the USA selling McDonalds Ham Buggers, although he was a successful businessman, Ronald couldn’t forget his true vocation and still dressed every day as a clown.
Because the Americans couldn’t speak proper English or Scottish for that matter they pronounced Bugger as Burger.
Back in the Black Country “Billy King” the butcher’s boy who sat on the faggots was now a Butchery tycoon owning a chain of butchers shop through out Great Britain.
Being the entrepreneur, he set up a chain of Ham Bugger restaurants in England and called them Wimpy’s.
Alas the Wimpy restaurant chain hit hard times and he had to sack all his employees and close it down.
The disgruntled employees decided to set up a new restaurant chain and because they hated Billy King so much they called it “Bugger King”.
And what became of the orphans? They grew into extremely large pillars of Black Country society, know as “The Buggers of Dudley”
V Southall